


The Perfect Song

by dragonofdispair



Series: The Perfect Song [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: (Nonhostile) Hacking and Reprogramming, (Temporary) Body Modification, (Willing) Sexual Slavery, Aftercare, Age Difference, Alien Biology, Alien Sex, Alternate Universe - No War, Attempted Rape, BDSM, Bondage, Chastity Belts, Coercing Consent, Collars, Consentacles, Decepticon Poetry Night, Deception, Electro play, Hand Feeding, Helplessness Kink, Jealousy, Kink Negotiation, Kinkmeme response, Leashes, M/M, Manipulation, No Kissing Robots, Pet Play, Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Porn With Plot, Possessive Behavior, Recovery, Restraints, Rope/cable Bondage, Safewords, Selling Virginity, Sex Toys, Shibari, Socially Awkward Character, Spark Sexual Interfacing, Stalking, Tactile Sexual Interfacing, Tentacles, Violence, Violent Fantasies, Virginity, dubcon, hurt comfort, minor PTSD, platonic twin bond, rape fantasies, the rest of the tags are all b/c of Barricade, tied up with his own datacords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-09-28 04:03:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 50,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10070627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: To follow his dreams, Jazz offers his virginity and himself to anyone willing to pay. His buyer, Prowl, has a lot of loneliness and a kink for virgins, but dreaming isn’t something he’s capable of. Yet.





	1. Act One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pjlover666](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pjlover666/gifts), [Rizobact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizobact/gifts).



> This is a response to a request on the Transformers Anonymous Kinkmeme (my first!) for Jazz selling his virginity, and himself, to the highest bidder. The original request was for sticky, but the OP was very understanding and open to the idea when I said I was interested but prefered writing plug and play. I’ve also changed the reason Jazz was trying to raise money. The original request can be found here: http://tfanonkink.livejournal.com/13205.html?thread=15933333 
> 
> I’m using 12drakon’s base two system for Cybertronian time measurements. Found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4865111
> 
> And you can imagine Jazz’s violino as any stringed instrument you want. I personally (really!) like violins. Specifically, for this story, I was imagining this violin: http://rizobact.tumblr.com/post/155407645696/nightmarehare-genocidaltophattedoharo 
> 
> Beta’d by Okkkay, Rizobact, and new friend Mog (Ficmog here on Ao3)

His partner often scoffed that the only way Prowl could get a date was by paying for it.

It was true.

Prowl was, especially upon first impression, thoroughly unlikable. Second impressions and onward tended only to get worse, though once or twice they had improved. Even dating networks like Connectix, which boasted the ability to cast a planet-wide net of mechs to match to his wants, needs and desires, often failed completely to find anyone who could tolerate Prowl’s abrasive nature, inability to understand social niceties, limited range of emotions (and even more limited ability to express them), and obsession with work. And those matches it _did_ find for him, Prowl himself found thoroughly unlikeable. He did not want to date someone like himself (he couldn’t tolerate seeing those traits in others); he wanted someone adventurous and fun. Not to drag him out of his shell, but simply because if Prowl wanted a mirror reflection of himself, he’d plug into one of his own ports thank you very much!

In fact it had been so long since his Connectix account had made any real attempt to actually find him a match that Prowl often debated deleting it, like he had his other dating-site accounts. But Connectix offered something those other sites didn’t: mechs looking to sell various interfacing acts. Connectix wasn’t the only site that allowed customers to sell interfacing to other customers, but it was the only one that didn’t take a substantial cut of the transaction so it was the one Prowl liked best, and supported with his continued patronage. While the algorithms dedicated to finding someone who’d actually like Prowl for Prowl (and who Prowl would like in return) had long given up, those dedicated to matching Prowl to mechs with _other_ criteria for a successful “date” were still giving occasional hits.

Once, while drunk, Barricade had asked why Prowl bothered. Every street corner had dozens of buymecha who’d sell the same thing for a fraction of the price. But Prowl didn’t want the hardened, hostile firewalls of experienced prostitutes. Even those slightly pricier escort services that boasted they’d give their customers a “feeling of complete openness” didn’t deliver an interface that could satisfy Prowl. The immense processing power his tact-net could bring to bear always revealed the edges of the partitions. No matter how skilled the courtesan was, to Prowl it always ended up feeling like a hostile interrogation (or like he was being studied again) rather than a mutual interface. Much less like he was the one in control, as he desired.

Given his dislike of overly developed firewalls, it was perhaps not surprising that even among those selling their services on Connectix he had gravitated to mecha selling a single thing: their virginity.

If he was going to simply outright buy interfacing, he might as well spend the extra and get something he’d enjoy.

And even though his purchases were obligated to stay and see the act through no matter how much they disliked Prowl, there was something else Prowl enjoyed about those encounters. They couldn’t leave him, it was true, but they were nervous, shy, or brazen over their fear and Prowl… liked, he supposed, that his efforts to calm and reassure them made it feel more “real” than purchasing a night with more experienced mecha did. When he succeeded anyway, it felt real. It wasn’t, and he knew it, but it was an illusion he clung to desperately.

He picked up his single touchscreen tablet computer as he settled onto the single stool in his modest apartment. Kitchen, washroom, berthroom — what else did a mech need? Barricade could give him a list, but Barricade had hobbies that didn’t include work, and didn’t have expensive interfacing habits.

He scrolled past his usual assortment of entertainment apps he couldn’t afford to keep on his own hard drive — a general internet browser, NetVid, StoryDrive, Discourse, and even a couples of tactical games like StarCraft — before reaching his Connectix app and opening it to see if it had anything for him. Even with a network of users and subscribers that spanned the entire planet, virgins looking to sell their first sexual experience were uncommon. Combine that with the algorithms sorting for ones either in Prowl’s area or willing to travel to it — which were the only ones reasonably available to Prowl — and Prowl only got a hit every few vorn or so. It never hurt to check.

This time Connectix did have a potential match for him and Prowl opened the mech’s profile.

He looked at the picture before he looked at the name and immediately Prowl’s fans kicked on. Sleek and dark — _strong_ — with a blue visor peeking — _innocent, vulnerable_ — flirtatiously over his shoulder tire and small doorwings, this mech had chosen a large format picture that showcased a view of his entire back, spinal panels pulled aside to show off his fully intact seals. Prowl ran his claws over the picture, tracing that sinuous spinal curve, already imagining the mech writhing under him. Held down, helpless, but uncowed.

A moment later he shook himself free of the fantasy. First things first.

His name was Two-Tone, which even Prowl thought was a boring name, and he was a stage technician in Polyhex. He was willing to travel. He described himself as young and shy and trying to raise money to make a change in his life. A _significant_ change, if his asking price was anything to go by. Prowl almost rejected the mech’s offer as too expensive when he read just _what_ he was offering.

Two-Tone wasn’t just offering his seals, but also complete servitude to his buyer for fifty vorn.

_Fifty vorn._

After so long interfacing exclusively with virgins, Prowl certainly had developed a kink for seal-breaking, and it was true that Two-Tone’s seals would be gone after the first night. But for Prowl the most essential part of networking with a virgin was the _lack of substantial firewalls._ THAT the mech would retain for as long as Prowl was his sole partner (because, he was already thinking possessively, he wouldn’t _let_ Two-Tone install anything else). He’d be able to interface every night, indulge _all_ his kinks, not just the one… He checked his finances to be sure he could afford the mech, and clicked the button that would send a message to start the obligatory dance of assuring his purchase he wasn’t a creep, rapist or serial killer before any sensible mech would agree to meet.

*

*

*

Two-Tone got the message at work. It popped up on his HUD like dozens of others had since he’d put his offer up on Connectix, bright and cheerful and informing him that “A Potential Match Has Responded To Your Profile - Log On To Connectix To Meet The Mechanism Of Your Dreams. Connectix: Where Dreams Come True.”

He ignored it.

He was in the middle of a tricky job rewiring the stage speakers to tolerate the decibels tonight’s scheduled performance would hit. The band (unironically named Realm of Screams) had a reputation for blowing out speakers and Two-Tone was _not_ going to let it happen to _his_ babies.

The message sat in his inbox until his twin Ricochet woke up the next morning. Two-Tone had spent most of the night clinging to the stage lights, listening wistfully to the band and hadn’t gotten back until well after Ricochet had gone to bed. He’d been tempted to check out the message and his newest prospective buyer’s profile then, but he’d opted for recharge instead. Ricochet would have been mad if he’d read it alone.

It was Ricochet’s condition for allowing his twin to do this: that all of his prospective buyers had to satisfy Ricochet’s criteria for non-skeeziness. Two-Tone had told him that he was capable of taking care of himself, but Ricochet had scoffed. According to him, anyone who still hadn’t broken their seals, even to self-loop or plug into a pornload, was not capable of judging if a mech was skeezy or not.

Since Two-Tone really did want his twin’s support in this, he’d acquiesced. Together they’d already reviewed the Connectix profiles of over a dozen prospective buyers. They’d even gone as far as exchanging some messages with a few of them. Eventually they’d all said or done something that set off Ricochet’s skeezy-mech alarm bells and they’d broken contact. Two-Tone despaired of ever seeing the opportunity to have _his_ dreams come true.

He was a good stage technician, but just because he’d been sparked into the technician caste didn’t mean that’s where he wanted to stay. Ricochet had gotten a new job and a new name… by proving to a military recruiter that he had a real talent for guns. Now Two-Tone wanted his chance! Unfortunately, no matter how much singing talent Two-Tone proved he had, transfering to the entertainment caste required more than a good singing voice. He needed to be able to sing, dance, play at least one instrument and preferably write his own music and choreograph his own routines. He needed a tutor, or lots of free time and access to practice music and an instrument, or (preferably) both… _neither_ of which he was going to get on a stage technician’s shifts and salary.

Two-Tone had done the math. The minimum he needed to pay for a tutor and enough practice time to reasonably learn everything he needed to learn before he’d even be considered for a gig was thirty-thousand shanix. Preferably three times that, for a good tutor, and things like decent energon and rent in a neighborhood where he wouldn’t get raped and killed driving home from lessons, if he had to move away from Ricochet to live in the same city as his tutor. Ninety-thousand shanix. Two-Tone wouldn’t see that much shanix in his lifetime.

So Two-Tone and Ricochet sat at their shared breakfast table reviewing the message and “Prowl’s” Connectix profile.

The message was devoid of any sort of greetings, salutations or basic politeness. It was, quite simply, a proposed payment plan to deposit an amount into an escrow account every six kilocycles until he had paid the entirety of Two-Tone’s asking price of one-hundred thousand shanix (Two-Tone had expected to have to haggle a bit), at which point the proposed fifty vorn of service would be up and the entire account would be transferred to Two-Tone.

“Ain’t the best first impression a mech could make,” was Ricochet’s observation.

But not the worst. _That_ distinction had gone to a mech whose first message had been a lurid and detailed account of just how he was going to tie his new slave down and rape him repeatedly.

Prowl’s profile was only marginally better than his initial message. The picture was okay, even if it looked a bit like the mech would rather be taking a mug shot. Praxan, enforcer paint. Enforcer _job,_ according to the profile. The mech even described himself as unsociable and obsessed with work. Two-Tone was ready to reject him just on that, but for the first time Ricochet was the more hopeful.

“Skeezes want to be seen as attractive,” was his take. “The fact that he doesn’t try and present himself like that… he might just be lonely, desperate, and able to pay. That’s the sort of mech you want, if you’re still going through with this.”

“Am!”

“Then let’s see if he’s got a dating history we can check out.”

Surprisingly (at least to Two-Tone), Prowl _did_ have a dating history. Or, more accurately according to the gossip section, a _one-night stand_ history. Apparently Prowl exclusively bought virgins, played with them for a night, then turned them loose with their full payment. Comments ranged from _I’ve never talked to someone who was so awkward, but it was the best first time I could have had_ to _He’s paid for you, and knows it, but he’s willing to take the extra time to make sure you’re comfortable._ There was one _If you stick around for a second night, you’ll find out just how kinky he is. Up to you if that’s a good thing or not._

Again not exactly accolades, but the more Two-Tone read Prowl’s dating history and the comments the more they supported Ricochet’s first impression. Prowl was lonely and desperate and this was how he chose to buy his companionship.

Two-Tone would have prefered someone with whom he shared at least some interests, but Ricochet was of the opinion that he wasn’t going to get a better offer.

Together they composed their first response. Hoping not to put off a self-described unsociable mech, they kept it short. Terse, even, in Two-Tone’s view.

*

*

*

Prowl got the message when he got home from work. He didn’t keep the Connectix app on his own hard drive so that was only to be expected. It was fine, he could be patient, and it was better than being potentially distracted on the job.

To be honest, he hadn’t expected a response just yet. Statistically, in the past, if his initial overture wasn’t responded to within a breem, then it took an average of three cycles for a mech to get back to him. (After seven cycles, Prowl knew his offer had been rejected.) But this one had come the next cycle.

It was short and to the point; Prowl approved.

_Proof of identity?_

*

*

*

The response came while Two-Tone was at work again. Despite his best efforts, Realm of Screams had damaged one of his speakers and he had to repair it before tonight’s performance started. He was in the middle of gutting a device twice his height and replacing the damaged components when the ping came up on his HUD again. He ignored it until he and Ricochet could look at it the next morning.

It was simply a link to Prowl’s information on Praxus’ directory of employees. Enforcers and lawyers didn’t have their addresses on the public directory, but the rest of his information was there. Suspiciously Ricochet explored the site, but eventually concluded the information was genuine.

It was time to start talking terms and expectations.

*

*

*

It took several exchanges for Prowl to conclude this was an ineffective method of trying to sort out such details. They both received the others’ messages while at work and were unable to respond to them. Further, Two-Tone had not said as much, but Prowl had concluded that he was also being vetted by an associate of Two-Tone’s. Someone who was determined to ensure his friend or batchmate didn’t get a raw deal. An understandable precaution. Prowl approved, even if it complicated the process considerably.

But it didn’t change the fact that they needed to get a lot of things done, and their current exchange of messages was inefficient.

His next message was his Discourse ID and a range of times during which he could talk.

*

*

*

It took another ten cycles, but finally Two-Tone and Prowl found a time during which they could meet on Discourse.

Two-Tone was nervous as he watched the Prowl’s ID indicator change from offline to online, but there was no going back now. Or well, technically there was. He hadn’t agreed to anything except to talk yet.

Silently Ricochet put his hand on Two-Tone’s back, encouraging, and Two-Tone smiled thankfully.

Then Discourse started chiming for attention and Two-Tone did his best to sound confident as he answered the call. “Hi!”

“Hello,” came the strut-melting reply. Prowl might be socially awkward but his _voice_ was sure a treasure to listen to. “We have some details to discuss.”

“Yeah.” Two-Tone fiddled with the ball Ricochet kept on his computer table. “First I suppose is that you’re pretty far away. I need to find a job and apartment in Praxus before we can start.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Prowl almost snapped. “You will stay with me, and I will buy energon and anything else you require. My schedule is occasionally erratic; I do not want to be working around yours as well.”

“O~kay,” he exchanged a glance with his twin.

“S’pretty possessive of you,” Ricochet spoke up.

“My twin, Ricochet,” Two-Tone hastily introduced.

“I do not care how possessive it seems. The fact is that I am paying for fifty vorn of servitude. I do not want to be working around a second job of yours, especially if we would continue to have the scheduling mis-matches we’ve dealt with up to this point.” Prowl plowed on without acknowledging the introduction. “Further, a chance to indulge in possessiveness is part of the appeal.”

“Lock him up and throw away the key?” Ricochet growled, while Two-Tone reeled. The mech had described himself as unsociable, true, but… how!

Prowl seemed to realize he’d made a blunder at that point. “I’m sorry. Yes, I will admit to having some inclinations along those lines, but if he agrees to that, I would not have him cut off communication with you or any of his other acquaintances. You are free to visit, and I will be sure to schedule free cycles for him to explore the city or whatever else he wishes to do.”

“Maybe…” Two-Tone interrupted before his twin could get truly incensed and ruin what may be his only chance to be bought by someone who probably wasn’t a sadist. “Just tell me what you want from me mech. Then we’ll decide if it’s a thing I can do for fifty vorn.”

“Perfect availability,” Prowl started, “as I’ve already said. Which, I am willing to pay extra for in the form of providing room, fuel and medical care. I do want to control when you are allowed outside my apartment — negotiable. I want to be able to control what you have installed on your processor — specifically your firewalls. Non negotiable. You will not be expected to service, or allowed to have, other partners. Non negotiable, and for your own protection. With nothing more, and possibly less, than basic firewalls, promiscuity is a dangerous behavior. I want to be able to indulge in more of my kinks than my usual of seal-breaking. Said kinks do not include causing pain or damage in any way, shape or form.”

“You want to control his processor; what about his frame? What’s your plans regarding mods? And I wanna make sure my brother’s got recourse if you leave him with mods or programs that are expensive to fix afterwards. That ain’t coming out of his payment.”

“Of course not,” Prowl _did_ snap that, sounding offended. “I currently don’t have any plans for, or kinks that require, permanent modifications to his frame. If that changes, I will ensure they are things he can live happily with before installing them, and have them removed before releasing him from our contract. Anything I install in his processor, I will help uninstall.”

“You said you’ll provide medical care. _Playing doctor_ doesn’t count,” Ricochet said.

“I will register your twin as my peripheral spouse for the duration, which qualifies him for care from the Enforcer department’s primary care physician. I will send you First Aid’s credentials.” Another link to Praxus’ directory of employees, this one to the police department’s medic. Ricochet spent several moments reviewing the page.

“And if I’m not allowed to leave your flat, what am I supposed to do while you’re at work?” Two-Tone pressed while his twin was reading.

“Anything within the confines of my apartment. Read. Play games. Chat with your friends. Enroll in online schooling. Teach yourself a skill. I don’t care.”

 _Teach yourself a skill…_ Two-Tone twitched. Free time to teach himself a skill. Fifty vorn of learning and practicing while he waited for a self-admitted work-obsessed mech to get home and frag him. Ricochet looked over at him, and his suspicious expression eased up, fondness replacing it.

Ricochet leaned forward and typed in a notepad app where Prowl couldn’t see or hear the message, _If you’re still going through with this, it sounds like this is your guy._

 _I’m going through with this,_ was Two-Tone’s response.

*

*

*

It grated on his sense of duty to do so, but Prowl made sure he took the time off work to meet Two-Tone and his twin at the train station. Barricade had tried convincing Prowl to let him come, but Prowl refused. Given how astute Ricochet had seemed in his interrogations into Prowl’s character, he was quite certain Barricade would not meet the gunner’s criteria for “non-skeezy”. Prowl had a high enough chance of ruining this — and causing Two-Tone to invoke one of the cancellation clauses Ricochet had insisted on — for himself without Barricade’s “help”.

Prowl would have been willing to pay some of Two-Tone’s moving expenses, but the twins had apparently felt that, given all the extra benefits he was providing, it would have been rude. Two-Tone wasn’t coming with much anyway. Prowl knew it was insensitive of him to be relieved by that so he managed not to thank them for it.

Finally the crowd of disembarking passengers thinned and Prowl saw the two small Polyhexians and got a good look at them in person. Ricochet was shades of black, a subtle camouflage pattern befitting his military occupation with a yellow optic band, but it was Two-Tone who occupied his attention. Two-Tone was also black, a velvety soft matte shade that made him blend into shadows, with a dim blue visor. He had the paint scheme of a mech who had been designed to fade into the background. The only luggage Prowl could see was a small case of some kind, which he kept clutched to his chest.

Two-Tone spotted Prowl finally and gave a shy smile. He shifted on his pedes nervously.

Tomorrow, Prowl reminded himself, would be different than his previous purchases, but tonight Two-Tone was just a virgin, like any of the others he’d had in the past. Tonight, he could be awkward, but he couldn’t be abrasive. He had to put Two-Tone at ease.

Not the easiest thing for Prowl to do, but he had a checklist of things that had helped in the past.

 **First** \- _Start with a greeting. They’re useless, but mechs like them._

 **Second** \- _Introduce yourself, no matter how illogical it seems since you already know each other’s designations, professions and other relevant facts through Connectix._

 **Third** \- _Offer to carry any luggage. Even if they are perfectly capable of carrying it themselves._

Following the first three steps were easy enough. “Hello,” he offered as the twins came into conversational range. “I’m Prowl. Would you like me to carry your luggage?”

Two-Tone clutched the small case to his chest. “No. I’ve got it. I’m Two-Tone.”

Prowl stopped himself from saying _I know that._

“Ricochet,” Ricochet almost growled. Prowl took a moment to parse it, but he identified Two-Tone’s twin’s stance as protective.

So Two-Tone was shy and nervous and his twin was brazen over his fear. For a moment Prowl floundered. Those were two different scripts! He couldn’t follow both!

Two-Tone was the important one, Prowl decided after a moment of panic. The contract was already signed, so Ricochet would have to leave Two-Tone in Prowl’s care before they got to his apartment tonight, meaning it was Two-Tone who had to be put at ease for their upcoming interface. That, he judged, had the highest chance of successfully acquiring his new toy.

If he were being honest with himself, which he usually was even as he did not allow that honesty to destroy his comforting illusions, that was another reason for solely purchasing virgins for interface. It was a common element, and the archetypes (if one allowed him to use that term) he had to deal with were limited. It meant he could write these scripts and, after much fine-tuning and practice, they worked. Yay, successful personal interaction. More experienced mechs had entire backgrounds — sexual and not — that had to be taken into account when conversing with them, much of which was not recorded in their Connectix profiles. More variables complicated his scripts. Even if he was paying for the interface, attempting any sort of personal interaction in the joors leading up to it made Prowl feel very much like a failure of a mechanized being. One of the few emotional responses he was capable of.

Even if he still got his interface, it had been ruined by his awkwardness beforehand.

So he’d gravitated to virgins, and their enjoyably uncomplicated firewalls, and being able to use his scripts (mostly) effectively.

Truthfully, as much as he was looking forward to the opportunity to have an available partner on hand when he got home from work, and to indulging his various kinks, the reality of more than one cycle was terrifying him. Sending his no-longer-virgins off with their payment was not complicated. Keeping a mech for fifty vorn could potentially be _very_ complicated, and Prowl did not have any scripts prepared.

Of course he only realized he’d been standing in the station, staring at the two black Polyhexians like a complete and utter _failure_ while he decided on a script to follow because his Stop-Staring-You’re-Being-Weird Timer (not his words, but he didn’t know what else to call it) pinged him a reminder that he, well, needed to stop staring because it was starting to be weird. Instead he needed to check number four on his list.

 **Four** — _Stop standing around thinking and lead them to dinner. You remember that nice dinner you made reservations for? Right? Get to it!_

 **Five** — _Remember, you would be honored if they joined you. It does not matter if they have no choice!_

“I made reservations for dinner,” he informed them, quickly averting his gaze so he wasn’t staring. “I would be honored if you joined me.”

“Sure,” Two-Tone smiled nervously. “Ain’t like we got anywhere else to be.”

Prowl led them out of the train station and idled at the curb until they had gotten that case Two-Tone was carrying situated (Prowl _could_ have put it in his subspace, but Two-Tone had said no) and transformed.

This was the first time Prowl had been to this restaurant. He knew from experience that taking his “dates” to the usual cop hangouts was off-putting, but his favorite alternative — a small, clean outdoor cafe one of his more understanding previous dates had helped him pick out — was closed because the park where it was located was undergoing repairs and renovations. He’d been forced to search out someplace new. Not having any criteria of what was appropriate other than “nice,” “romantic,” and “within his budget”, he’d used a restaurant finder app to search for one fitting those criteria.

The waiter was not happy to see them, but Prowl did not care. He was there to serve energon, nothing more.

The twins’ reaction was much more important. They looked awed and unhappy in equal measures and Prowl looked around again as they were seated, trying to figure out the reasons for that.

Clean and not smelling like off-duty cops — Nice. Check. Chandelier — romantic. Check. Made of glass, rather than crystal — budget consideration. Check. Low lighting — Romantic. Check. Menu… menu pricy, but well within Prowl’s ability to pay — Nice. Check.

It was probably Prowl himself making them uncomfortable, he concluded as they bent over the same menu to discuss things. He watched them until his Stop-Staring-You’re-Being-Weird Timer went off again, then looked away. He had been firmly told that staring was weird, off-putting, and led to failed social interactions. Which led to failed interfacing.

“We’d like to split a sampler tray,” Two-Tone finally announced. “If that’s okay,” he added nervously.

Prowl opened the menu long enough to check the price. It was the most expensive, non-dessert item on the menu, but split between the two of them was still a reasonable price. Not that he was going to say no. Item **ten** on his checklist was _Whatever your date wants to eat is fine. You don’t have any objections to it. Ever._

“Of course.” Maybe it was the fact that they were splitting something that they feared Prowl would object to? They were twins. What did Prowl know about twins? They were already bonded to each other; he remembered one of the lab techs at work complaining about that when he had been trying to date one of a pair of twins (the other twin had hated him, as Prowl recalled). Bonded mechs couldn’t sparkshare with other mechs, unless both bonded partners were part of the merge. Prowl did not like sparksharing, so that was not going to be a problem. But he could not remember anything else about how twins might differ from non-split spark mechs. Maybe sharing fuel was customary. Prowl hoped that being unable to share would not be a problem for both of them.

When the waiter took their order, Prowl ordered a plain midgrade mixed with silver without checking the menu. He only ever drank three things: the sludgy stimulant-laced mix served at the precinct, plain medgrade, and midgrade with silver.

He realized he had been looking at the twins in silence long enough for it to be awkward when his alarm went off again. He averted his optics.

Tentatively he held out his hand, laying it palm-up on the table. He made sure to keep everything about it relaxed. According to his script, this was an undemanding invitation to hold hands. Reaching out and grabbing someone was rude, but holding hands was soothing and put mechs about to engage in a sexual encounter at ease.

Two-Tone took the invitation, laying his hand palm-down on Prowl’s and smiled. Prowl forced his lips to quirk in response. He _could_ smile, but not on demand and he’d been informed that his attempts to do so were frightening. Not reacting at all to another’s smile was just as bad though; quirking his lips was a compromise.

“Your profile said you were in mechaforensics,” Two-Tone said quietly. “What’s that? Is it interesting?”

“Yes.” Prowl answered. “My job is to reconstruct crime scenes to determine what happened, providing evidence the investigators then use to solve the crimes.” **Fifteen** \- _Your job is fascinating, but repeat after me: But you don’t want to hear the details. Tell me about you._ “But you don’t want to hear the details. Tell me about you.”

Two-Tone brightened and started talking about sound systems and speaker maintenence and being allowed to climb up onto the light systems and listen to the bands play. Prowl listened attentively, occasionally asking questions. Information was always good, and he never knew when the minutiae of sound systems and other stage electronics would be useful for an investigation.

Even Ricochet relaxed enough to talk a little bit about sniper training.

All-in-all, not the most awkward conversation Prowl had ever had. By the time they left the restaurant, Two-Tone and Ricochet had relaxed. Ricochet had been willing to leave Two-Tone with the instruction to _Call me tomorrow,_ and Two-Tone himself was touching Prowl and smiling in a way he classified as _nervously flirtatious._ Success.

Which meant Prowl needed to get on with the evening before it became not-successful.

 _This,_ Prowl thought about three breems later, after they’d arrived at his apartment and Two-Tone had divested himself of his case and the items he’d brought in his subspace, _was the part he was actually good at._

Two-Tone writhed against Prowl’s chassis, gasping and mewing, while Prowl expertly drove every coherent thought from his processor. The younger mech tried returning the favor, but pleasure and the newness of that pleasure kept banishing his efforts and left him clinging to Prowl for support.

Already, Two-Tone’s three primary cords trailed from his wrist and ended in the topmost ports on Prowl’s spinal column; the others spilled out of his wrist beside them, twitching uncontrollably. His personality fluttered desperately against Prowl’s firewalls, unsteadily tugging at him with erratic waves of pleasure. Prowl though, stood against it, unmoved. Two-Tone was so _close,_ it felt like he’d be one of those who—

Two-Tone screamed, overload turning every synapse to _pleasure,_ as Prowl pierced the first seal with his claws. He thrashed, but Prowl held him still enough to guide the datacord already unspooled from his wrist to the corresponding port… Two-Tone’s firewalls shattered at the first touch of Prowl’s mind. Prowl groaned. Yesss… He revelled in free, unfettered access to the other’s processors. He pressed the tiny personality down, holding it and cradling it, and drowning them both in his own _pleasure._

Two-Tone’s overload ripped through them again. _Please, please, please…_ panted the overwhelmed processors.

Please, more. Please, it’s too much.

 _More,_ Prowl answered and broke the seal on the second port. This time Prowl slaved those open processors to his own, holding back the overload as the personality wiggled desperately for release…

 _MINE,_ echoed in Prowl’s thoughts, and Two-Tone answered, begging, _yes, yes, yes, please!_ as Prowl ripped away the third and fourth seals together, occupying them almost instantly to increase the bandwidth of their connection. More of Two-Tone’s thoughts were open for Prowl to see, rearrange, play with. Charge crackled along both their plating, but Two-Tone was too far gone, too held and restrained within his own mind to move. Physical sensation was nothing against the onslaught of Prowl’s mental assault.

 _MINE,_ echoed again in Prowl’s thoughts as he plugged his final datacord into the available port. Two-Tone screamed, pleasure forcing a physical reaction, and then Prowl finally, _finally,_ let them both overload, spiralling down into bliss.

*

*

*

Two-Tone’s alarm didn’t go off the next morning, and it was late in the first shift when he stirred. His back hurt and it took a moment to realize why. His seals! The memory of Prowl’s fingers and plugs and _mind_ flooded back and Two-tone arched and twisted, electricity dancing over his plating as the aftershock ripped through his systems.

When it faded and he was left panting he laughed raggedly to himself. That first review they’d read from one of Prowl’s previous partners had been spot on: the most awkward mech imaginable to talk to, but _frag_ was he good in the berth. Not that Two-Tone had much experience in the berth, this being his _only_ experience, but nothing he’d heard or read had prepared him for the reality.

He shuddered, calming himself. He needed to get up. Call Ricochet… He should do that now… He went to bring up his apps on his HUD and gawked. All his apps were _gone._ Including the basic communications app. Email, Discourse, games, all his music… He had his operating system and that was _it!_

He bolted upright, flinging the blankets he’d been carefully tucked under aside, looking for Prowl.

Prowl, of course, was gone. He had work.

A quick check of his logs confirmed it: this morning, while Two-Tone had still been in deep recharge, Prowl had adjusted his settings to give himself administrative access to his new slave’s settings and programming, then promptly used it to delete all extraneous programs and data from his hard drive.

Something chimed.

Two-Tone glared at the tablet computer that had been left on the table beside the berth. _Two-Tone_ was written across the screen in big glyphs. He snatched up the tablet and tapped it.

The big glyphs turned into a letter.

> _I don’t want you able to distract yourself when you’re with me. Do not try and reinstall anything. I’ve created a profile for you on this computer and loaded everything you had on your hard drive onto it. I’ve preserved your settings. I also gave you access to both my NetVid and StoryDrive accounts, since I did not see either of those in your browser history. I do not have a vid-screen, but I accessed the purchase information for your disks and made them available to watch on this computer. The basic browser has filters installed so you cannot access pornographic or any sort of interfacing material. If you wish to do research into interfacing or kinks, do it through the StoryDrive library — it is much more reliable._
> 
> _I left a cube of fuel out for when you wake up. Don’t take any more from the dispenser._
> 
> _Don’t try and leave the apartment._

Okay. Prowl had been honest that he was possessive and controlling, and had said that he wanted to control what was on Two-Tone’s processor. This had just been unexpected. He tapped the letter to indicate he’d read it. It brought up the choice between the two users: Prowl or Two-Tone

Curious, he tapped Prowl’s. It prompted him for a password and he gave up. Tapping his own also brought up a prompt for a password, but he took a chance and typed in one of his standard ones. The view changed to a customizable dashboard.

He’d play with that later. Right now he was looking for one of his communications apps. He needed to call Ricochet.

Finding his inbox, Two-Tone winced. There were about a dozen unheard messages from his brother. He didn’t take the time to listen to them and just called.

“Finally!” Ricochet answered. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. He just took all my apps off my hard drive and put them on his tablet. I wasn’t getting the notices.” He would have liked a warning, but he guessed he’d already agreed to Prowl controlling what he had on his processor. He hadn’t completely gotten rid of anything. Just moved it. “But I’m fine. It was…” Two-Tone settled for, “good,” even though that didn’t come close to describing it. “Fantastic,” he amended. “I just ended up sleeping in. He’s at work now.”

Letting the conversation run, Two-Tone answered questions about his well-being. His spine hurt, but that was expected, right? And his diagnostics weren’t showing anything wrong except the missing seals. No, he didn’t have any scuffs or dents. Yep there were a few scratches, but the mech had claws; he was _fine._ He started looking for his camera app so he could take a picture to send to Ricochet. He found the one he’d used for vorn, but when he tried activating it, it told him that this device did not have a camera installed. He huffed in annoyance.

“What?”

“This thing’s got no camera. I was going to take a picture so you could see for yourself I was okay.”

“That’s annoying.”

“Yeah.”

He found the door to the washrack and was relieved to see a mirror there, a full length one. Curious, he turned and looked over his shoulder, opening his port-covers to inspect himself. The last time he’d done this, he and Ricochet had been getting a picture that was both “sexy” and showed off all the seals. Now he moved and squirmed trying to see in the mirror.

“Huh. That’s weird.”

“What?” Ricochet suddenly sounded worried.

“Ain’t hurt or anything. I didn’t notice it last night—”

“If he’s any good in the berth at all you shouldn’t’ve had enough processor to remember your own name.”

“— _BUT,”_ Two-Tone spoke over his twin, “he didn’t break the seal on the lowest one.”

“Maybe he’s saving it for later.”

“Maybe, just seems weird.”

They continued talking, Ricochet telling him about an amusing incident on the train going back to Polyhex. It hadn’t been amusing at the time, because he’d been tired, but sleep had changed his perspective. Two-Tone described the rest of Prowl’s apartment.

It was… stark. That was the best word.

The berthroom was decorated in shades of white, over dark grey walls. A silver wall decoration was just a beautifully stylized glyph for Harmony. A sentiment Two-Tone could appreciate, even if his harmonies weren’t the ones the designer had in mind. It was minimalist and elegant, which Two-Tone found completely at odds with the mech who’d met them at the train station and awkwardly taken them to dinner.

During negotiations, Prowl had been abrasive, but in person he was… awkward. Two-Tone was reminded of watching a newly sparked actor reading his way through his first script, trying so hard to impress the play’s director, but without the practice or charisma that older, more experienced actors had. Everything he’d done was just… off. Mech wasn’t dancing to the same beat as the rest of them.

Moving out into the rest of the apartment and getting his first good look at it only affirmed his evaluation of the decor. Someone else had chosen the furnishings and decorations for Prowl. Probably a professional, someone who’d take the instruction of “simple, clean, no clutter or overuse of colors” and give him this minimalist, stark white-on-white on dark grey apartment back without caring that it made the room look cold and impersonal. Two-Tone wondered if Prowl even noticed the furnishings, or if he’d had a decorator in solely because he’d been told that decorating was something normal mechs did.

He found his viddisks, books, violino case and other belongings neatly stacked on the single table next to the cube Prowl had pulled out for him. Satisfied that Two-Tone was alright for the moment, Ricochet hung up and went back to bed. He only had a two-cycle leave pass, and he’d lost a lot of sleep travelling back and forth with Two-Tone.

Next to the cube was a sampler package of common additives. Two-Tone stirred in a slightly sour ascorbic acid mix and sipped, contemplating what to do with his belongings. Prowl hadn’t given him a place to put things, but it wasn’t like they’d get mixed up with anything in this stark, white room.

What did Prowl do for fun? Or did he ever even bother with pursuits outside of work?

Or was that what Two-Tone was here for?

There was a shelf with two globular white lamps, and an exquisite white crystal between them. Two-Tone took his disks and, after turning both lamps on and off a few times to check the lighting, arranged them artistically on the shelf, like that’s what the shelf was for, but it also had these other decorations. The crystal ended up sitting on top of a short stack of them. Two-Tone stepped back to survey the effect and nodded in satisfaction. Since Prowl didn’t have a screen, he wouldn’t be using them, and they made the whole room look much more lived in. More normal.

He debated where to put his books and games and other things. The viddisks looked fine where they were, but the room was so stark that even what little he’d brought with him risked cluttering the apartment.

The bedroom, he decided. He could put them on the side table. Prowl’s only furniture was the berth and a single stool at the table, and of the two Two-Tone imagined he’d prefer the berth for things like reading and playing games. If Prowl didn’t like his things there, he’d have to give Two-Tone an actual place to put them.

Last, he returned to the table and the case he’d left on it.

Reverently he opened it to reveal the gleaming, burnished metal of the violino within.

He’d cleaned out his savings to buy this, and he wouldn’t have dared if Prowl hadn’t indicated he’d have the time to learn and practice. It wasn’t a very high quality instrument. A student’s instrument. Mass produced. It wouldn’t have the deep, complex tones of masters violino. And  of course he had to buy a used one; there were several nicks and dents he could see marring the surface of the instrument. One of the pegs was bent, so the string wasn’t perfectly aligned with the others.

It was the most beautiful thing Two-Tone had ever seen.

He pulled the tablet over and opened a (dubiously legal) music lessons app. Immediately, basic instructions for cleaning, tuning and caring for a violino came on the screen. Two-Tone was immediately absorbed, and completely lost track of time.

*

*

*

Two-Tone looked up when the door opened and Prowl entered.

He put the violino carefully back into its case with one last wistful caress and closed down the app. Prowl wanted his full attention when he got home, and Two-Tone would give it.

Prowl stared at him, then quickly looked away. Two-Tone had noticed him doing that last night. It was decidedly odd. He didn't know Prowl well enough yet to guess the reason behind that particular tick though. He ignored it. “How was mechaforensics this cycle?”

“I spent two shifts calculating bullet trajectories and recording the ballistics information of bullets left behind at the scene. I determined, based on those two factors, that there were at least three different guns fired, which means—” he stopped. Looked back at Two-Tone. “But you don’t want to hear the details. Tell me how you spent your shifts.”

The impression of a mech reading a script was back.

“Nothing much. Just getting everything squared away. Starting to practice,” he patted the closed case. “Trying to learn to play it, y’know?” Realizing there was only one stool and he was still sitting on it, Two-Tone hurried to stand. “I’ve been sitting all shift; ain’t got a problem standing for a while.”

“Go sit on the berth.”

O-kay. Pleasantries were over then.

Two-Tone went and made himself comfortable.

A few kliks later, Prowl entered the room with a cube of energon. “You used the ascorbic acid mix for your morning energon. I made that for you again.”

Two-Tone grinned. He really would have prefered something milder, but, “That’s fine.”

Prowl didn’t acknowledge. He climbed up on the bed and straddled Two-Tone’s legs. Automatically the smaller mech tried pulling away — personal space much! — but he was pinned well. Prowl watched him for exactly three kliks, then looked away.

After another klick, Two-Tone settled. Prowl wasn’t squishing him, even if this sudden proximity was weird and intimate and a bit uncomfortable because of it. His systems were starting to take in the data — Prowl’s heat and weight and the gentle sensation of his fans washing over him — and anticipating _other_ things. Two-Tone’s still aching spine heated up in anticipation. “This is nice but I would’ve appreciated a bit of warning. You gonna frag me?”

“Yes,” Prowl answered bluntly. “But first I am going to feed you.”

“Can feed myself. Right now I’d rather you frag me.”

“I want to feed you.”

Two-Tone didn’t have any counter-argument to that. Prowl had bought him to indulge his wants. Maybe this had been what that one reviewer had meant when they’d called Prowl really kinky for the second night? _Was_ this kinky? Or was this just Prowl? Two-Tone didn’t even know enough to know whether this was a thing. “Kinky”, in his research prior to putting himself up for sale, meant things like being tied up and spanked. He’d seen some pretty detailed pictures of darkly colored “dungeons” with all sorts of various ways of tying up a mech and flogging him, or whatever. So far, Prowl’s apartment had been the exact opposite of a dungeon, airy and starkly white with only two pieces of furniture.

“Sure mech,” he acquiesced. It wouldn’t do any harm, and he could look up if feeding was a kink later.

Assuming he wasn’t about to get his crash course in Prowl’s various kinks.

With a hum, Prowl cradled the back of the smaller mech’s head. Unsure what to do with his hands, Two-Tone ended up holding onto the armor around Prowl’s hips.

“Open,” Prowl murmured. Two-Tone obeyed, trying not to squirm. He’d been unprepared for the feeling of complete helplessness. He couldn’t do _anything_ but accept the sip of mildly sour energon Prowl poured carefully into his mouth. He couldn’t help but whimper.

Prowl set the cube aside to stroke down Two-Tone’s throat, which didn’t exactly help alleviate the helpless feeling. “Shh,” Prowl soothed. “Just swallow. Good mech,” he praised awkwardly when Two-Tone did so. “Relax. I want… to do things to you, with you, but I’m not going to hurt you. I will feel no pleasure from seeing you purge your tanks.” He petted down Two-Tone’s spine, which despite his current predicament, had the additional effect of reminding him _they were going to frag._ And his systems had decided last night that they _really liked_ fragging. Charge crackled over his plating. “Good. That’s what I want you to feel. Let me do all the work for you. Open.”

Two-Tone still felt helpless, even uncomfortably so, but he was aroused too. Prowl brushed one finger from the hand cradling his helm over the protective plating of the smaller mech’s topmost port. With a moan, Two-Tone arched into the touch, the cover sliding aside to let Prowl’s pinky press against the port itself. His fans clicked on, buzzing in the quiet room. Prowl watched, almost motionlessly as the younger mech came undone with almost no effort on his part. Even his pinky stilled, providing a constant pressure on Two-Tone’s port, but nothing else. Desperately aroused, he wiggled trying to get some stimulation, but Prowl tightened his grip on his neck and helm, bringing those movements to a halt. Over his own mewling cries and plating-rattling shudders, Two-Tone heard the sound of all the covers over his ports sliding open. _Shrrr-click! Shrrr-click! Shrrr-click! Shrrr-click! Shrrr-click!_

Two-Tone’s hands clenched against the plating of Prowl’s hips. He _was_ helpless, held securely in the grip of a mech who just wanted to prolong this torturous pleasure. Two-Tone looked up into Prowl’s optics to see them turn dark yellow with desire, though his expression remained otherwise unchanged. He was enjoying this, enjoying Two-Tone’s helplessness and desire.

“Please,” Two-Tone begged, doorwings beating the air as though he could get some stimulation from the air currents. He _needed_ more stimulation. He could overload just on the friction of Prowl’s finger on the sensitive components of the port, but Prowl refused to provide anything but gentle, firm pressure. “Please.”

“Drink first.”

This time he opened his mouth eagerly, and the helplessness he felt as Prowl poured a sip in only heightened his charge. Sparks danced between them, pinging against sensors making Two-Tone pour out more heat, more arousal into the air, as he swallowed.

He was rewarded with that finger on his port moving, grinding, _ever_ so slightly. It still made him arch in Prowl’s hard grip with a howl of pleasure.

Prowl waited until Two-Tone had gone limp and squirming for _more_ before ordering him to “Open.”

Two-Tone gasped as he did so.

This time Prowl leaned in to press his face against Two-Tone’s throat as he swallowed, pressing sharp canine teeth against his intake tube — _THREAT!_ went Two-Tone’s self-preservation subroutines, but he was so aroused, lost in pleasure that all he felt was warmth and touch and that helplessness that just pushed his arousal higher.

His vision was whiting out, optic-band going into protective shutdown.

“Open,” Prowl ordered again and with a gasp Two-Tone did so.

He was so lost, so desperate, he didn’t even notice when they finished the cube and Prowl set it aside. He _did_ notice when the gentle pressure against his port was replaced by the snug, sharp prongs of a plug. Pressure was replaced by electricity and Two-Tone wailed in desire/relief.

Carelessly Prowl broke through his firewalls and Two-Tone was smothered by the immense processing power Prowl brought to the connection. It was like being held physically, helpless and aroused. Prowl’s enjoyment of his state became his own, smoothly integrating into his own desires as their processors synced.

This time, Prowl just held him instead of overwhelming him, feeding him the emotions/stimulation to drive their pleasure higher, deeper.

 _Overload for me,_ Prowl commanded.

The breakers tripped. Two-Tone screamed.

*

*

*

When Two-tone rebooted, he could still feel Prowl’s processors, though the mech was no longer holding Two-Tone helpless and helplessly aroused and unable to think. It was, he thought, the difference between seeing a mountain and being trapped under it.

“Interesting analogy,” Prowl murmured.

Two-Tone fast-booted his optic band, to stare at Prowl incredulously. Rude!

Prowl sighed. “I usually am. Unfortunately.”

“If you’re gonna stay networked,” Two-Tone snapped before Prowl could respond to the thought, “at least stop answering me before I speak.”

Prowl’s head tilted in a manner that was more mechanimalistic than mech-like. “Why?”

Two-Tone knew he didn’t have a really _good_ answer to that question. It was like asking _why do you yawn when you see other people yawn?_ There just wasn’t a reason, except you _did._

“I don’t yawn when I see other mechs do so,” Prowl said matter of factly. “I never have seen the purpose. So if you think I should wait for you to speak before responding while we are networked, you will have to provide an actual reason.”

“How about because I said so?” Two-Tone snapped again, preempting Prowl’s response to his thoughts.

“I currently own you, not the other way around,” Prowl pointed out. “You will need to come up with a different reason.”

Two-Tone didn’t have another reason. He wished he did, because it was bad enough to have Prowl invasively looking at his every thought while — he scratched uselessly against Prowl’s firewalls — Two-Tone couldn’t see even a hint of what went on in _Prowl’s_ processor. Having Prowl respond to those thoughts instead of having a normal conversation made Two-Tone _really_ uncomfortable.

Prowl’s expression didn’t change, but his doors lowered. “That is a reason. I do not wish to cause you true discomfort.”

Really? There was an uncomfortable beat of silence while Two-Tone expected Prowl to respond, but Prowl didn’t.

Apparently really.

“So why _are_ you still networking with me?” Two-Tone finally asked the question he’d woken up with. “I thought interfacing was just… plug - data exchange - overload - unplug.”

“It usually is, if literature is to be believed,” Prowl said. Which Two-Tone knew because he’d been reading all he could. Ricochet’d warned him that anyone who bought him wouldn’t explain things to him, even though he was a virgin and as such had no experience to draw on. “This, however, is how I experienced data exchange for vorn while various scientists analysed my thought processes, followed my development, reviewed my abilities, and ultimately attempted to figure out what my flaws meant for the viability of their design. I have been told that constant networking should have been traumatizing for me and made me wish to avoid any prolonged contact with others’ minds, but instead I find it comforting. Familiar.” He paused, tilting his head in that mechanimalistic manner again. “I refuse to be the subordinate processor; I suppose that could be considered a form of trauma avoidance.”

Two-Tone supposed this was just a thing he’d have to get used to then.

“Come here,” Prowl ordered, though they were still very close. “Here,” he said more emphatically, patting the space directly next to his thigh. Two-Tone moved to that spot. “Kneel, hands on your thighs.” As soon as Two-Tone had done so, Prowl put his hand behind his neck and pushed him down. “Turn your head,” Prowl murmured as Two-Tone’s face met the white plating of Prowl’s thigh. The whole position put him off-balance and he flailed. Prowl caught his hands, and with a rev of his engine pulled them behind his back. It was an awkward, borderline painful stretch, mostly in his doorwings, which had to be pushed up so his hands could be pulled in place. “Give me a safeword.”

“Neon,” Two-Tone blurted out loud and over their connection. He was mildly uncomfortable and uncertain, but this was more weird and possessive than frightening. Then he realized he didn’t know _why_ that state was _neon_ and flailed, more mentally than physically.

“Good. As you’ve noticed I’ve made a few edits to your automatic reactions,” Prowl said. His tone wasn’t soothing, but Two-Tone was receiving the packets of _attempting reassurance_ data Prowl was sending him. They were only mildly successful. “I haven’t deleted anything, but from now on when I ask for a word, you will give me one of four responses. Helium if you are perfectly fine and comfortable mentally and physically. Neon if what I am doing makes you physically or mentally uncomfortable but you are willing or desire me to continue. Argon if you wish me to stop that particular activity but do not wish to bring an end to all activities altogether. Caesium if all activities need to stop immediately. In addition to now being programmed to answer with these words if I ask, you may at any time use them, verbally or via network connection, to communicate those conditions, even if your current orders are not to speak. Understand?”

_Yes._

“By your own request, you must speak out loud.”

“Yes,” Two-Tone gasped out.

“Good. Spread your knees a bit more, you will be more comfortable in this position.” As Two-Tone did so — and yes that was somewhat more comfortable, his torso didn’t feel so squished — Prowl changed which hand he was holding the smaller mech’s hands in place with, then stroked down his spine over the covered ports with the other. “Open these for me.”

Electricity crackled over his plating as Two-Tone obeyed. They’d just finished fragging a breem ago!

“If that is an objection, you need to say something, or formulate it as one of those four safewords.” Prowl played his claws over the delicate components.

Zing! went Two-Tone’s entire sensor net. Nope! No objections.

He wiggled — _tried_ to wiggle, but Prowl’s grip held him firmly. That was becoming a theme, he thought raggedly — as Prowl worked his way downward.

This was different. Mentally Prowl kept his distance, focusing on driving Two-Tone _crazy_ with pressure and friction and gentle pricking of his claws. Gasping and twitching, Two-Tone was pushed closer and closer to overload. Fans roared.

Two-Tone panted.

Suddenly Prowl pushed against the still-sealed lowermost port, just above the end of his spinal struts. It was… different, muffled, and Two-Tone arched into it, trying for more stimulation. Sparks flew. Two-Tone’s hands clenched and pulled, but Prowl still held them tight. He was close, he was sooo close. Distantly he felt Prowl’s pleasure at his state. Prowl wasn’t following him to overload this time, drawing pleasure solely from the control he had over Two-Tone’s reactions.

Then all thoughts of what Prowl was feeling were forced out of his processor when Prowl drove his claws through the thin mylar. _Pain/pleasure_ sparked along Two-Tone’s neural net and he howled.

When the electric onslaught faded Two-Tone found himself sprawled across Prowl’s lap, bleeding heat into the air. Prowl regarded him, mentally and visually, the image of himself slumped awkwardly echoing down their connection. There was nothing awkward in how he smoothed his hands over the smaller mech’s plating, intimate and soothing, a siren’s song to just lay there and recover.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Two-Tone rasped a few kliks later. Recovery was all well and good, but curiosity came more naturally to him. “Why’d you save that one for last?”

“There was no point in piercing it last night,” Prowl answered. “Because of a factory defect, I only have five cords. However I need it open eventually, and equally I saw no point in waiting. I thought you enjoyed the minor encore.”

Ooooh yeah he had.

He was also very much enjoying being sprawled across Prowl’s lap while the white mech petted him. Prowl might be completely inadequate at things like conversation, asking permission, and personal space, but he was fantastic at post-coital cuddling. It made Two-Tone sorry he’d missed it last night after being knocked offline by the amazing overload he’d gotten when Prowl had finally plugged into him fully.

Two-Tone was starting to get how this worked. Prowl was as unsociable, abrasive and possessive as he’d self-described himself in his profile. Two-Tone would just have to live with him being presumptive, grabby and bossy. But if he tolerated Prowl’s quirks and did what he was told to do, he was going to have a fantastic time the next fifty vorn.

 _That is my intent,_ Prowl sent down their networked connection. In the post-overload bliss, Two-Tone didn’t even care that it was mildly invasive. He would get used to it.

Even with Prowl’s impenetrable firewalls, Two-Tone could feel the mech’s possessive pleasure, the edges of fantasies unformed. Holding him down and tying him up and making him scream in pleasure. Learning to play him like Two-Tone was looking forward to playing the violino in the case.

Two-Tone shuddered, but let himself be lured into recharge by the mech’s current gentleness. He yawned.

_That’s right. Sleep._

*

*

*

Two-Tone didn’t so much wake, as was forced to reboot. Surprise and… mostly surprise, had him flailing as he suddenly went from offline in recharge to entirely awake under someone else’s control.

“Wake up,” Prowl commanded unnecessarily. “You have an appointment this morning.”

“You couldn’t have told me this last cycle?” was Two-Tone’s groaned answer.

He onlined his optic band to see Prowl, already standing next to the berth, tilting his head as he regarded his… what did Prowl think he was? A slave? Probably. Distantly he felt Prowl’s processors, those blank fortress walls cutting him off from seeing what was inside and resigned himself to never knowing, because he wasn’t going to ask and Prowl was adhering to his promise not to respond to Two-Tone’s thoughts.

Instead of answering Prowl responded to the verbal question he’d been asked with a question of his own: “Why?”

That just made Two-Tone groan again. He had a feeling that “because it would have been polite” was not a good enough reason to affect Prowl.

Breakfast was energon with ascorbic acid _again_ for Two-Tone, poured into his mouth — gently and carefully — while held down and helpless again, though this time Prowl refrained from turning it more sexual than necessary. Maybe because he _still_ hadn’t unplugged from last night.

Constant networking wasn’t too bad, really. It was just weird and invasive. Was that what that one reviewer had meant when they’d called Prowl kinky on the cycle after? His refusal to disconnect immediately after if his lover stayed with him? Was that “kinky”?

Prowl was gentle when it did come time for him to disconnect so they could leave. He held Two-Tone close, like he was something precious and breakable, and carefully pulled the plug from the port at the top of his neck. He held Two-Tone silently through the resulting tremors, providing a comforting engine pitch that was soothing to hear/feel. Wow… invasive and uncomfortable, true, but he actually _missed_ the sense of Prowl’s mind casually riffling through his own.

“Follow me,” Prowl ordered as soon as Two-Tone was alright to stand on his own again.

Prowl didn’t bother explaining what sort of appointment he could have. Two-Tone didn’t figure it out until they pulled up in front of a small clinic and transformed. Prowl had scheduled him for a medical checkup?

They breezed by the other cops in the waiting room — the precinct must be nearby. One of them catcalled as Prowl and Two-Tone passed, calling for him to leave the frigid psychopath for someone who actually knew how to set up a proper tandem network connection. Prowl ignored him; Two-Tone tried to, but ended up hurrying up so that he could use Prowl’s somewhat larger frame to hide.

“We have an appointment,” Prowl announced to the nurse at the check in station. Two-Tone put Prowl between himself and the rest of the room.

“Of course,” the nurse smiled and didn’t seem bothered when Prowl didn’t return it. “On time as always. I’ll take you to a room.

Two-Tone was glad not to have to stay in the waiting room with the other mechs. They were police officers! They couldn’t be _bad,_ not like the mechs he and Ricochet had screened and who hadn’t passed Ricochet’s criteria of “non-skeezy”, but that comment had made him uncomfortable.

The room had a place for the patient to sit, and a place for the medic to sit when he came in. There was no place for a partner or caretaker to sit. Two-Tone smiled, watching Prowl do what Ricochet — who often bullied his way into the room when Two-Tone had gotten checkups back home — always did and lean against the wall, protectively hovering over Two-Tone to glare at the as yet unarrived medic.

Unlike Ricochet, Prowl didn’t offer any conversation or similar to help Two-Tone deal with his nervousness.

The medic, when he came in, was a blocky, red and white modified medical model. He couldn’t smile, because his face consisted of a curved mask set below a pair of optics, themselves covered by a clear protective shield. It didn’t matter. He smiled at Two-Tone anyway. “Hello. I’m First Aid. You’re here for me to get a baseline for your general health and wellness.”

“Hi, I’m Two-Tone.”

First Aid smiled again. “Pleased to meet you. This is pretty unusual but you’re registered as Prowl’s peripheral spouse. He’s already told me how this came to be. Do you have anything to add to your records?”

“I’m a spark twin. Split.” Two-Tone fidgeted. “I don’t know if he would have mentioned that.”

“He had, and I’m familiar with, and have informed him of what that means. Are you aware?”

“Yeah. I can’t bond or sparkshare unless Rico’s with me too. We talked about it.”

“Alright. Let’s get started.” First Aid looked at Prowl, suddenly much less friendly. “You. Out. Wait in the hall.”

Two-Tone braced himself for the objection. Ricochet would have _exploded_ at being ordered out of Two-Tone’s examination room. But Prowl obeyed silently, running a possessive hand down Two-Tone’s arm on his way past. The door closed and Two-Tone looked back at First Aid to see the medic glaring at the closed door.

But he shook it off and sighed. He smiled again, this time feeling much more serious, at Two-Tone. “Are you okay?”

What? “Yeah. There a reason I shouldn’t be?”

First Aid sighed. “I need to access your diagnostics.” Medical scans only used the ports on a mech’s back in emergencies; otherwise medics were oathbound to use a barrier device that both mechs plugged into from one of the cords on their wrists. The device provided auxiliary firewalls, blocking the patient from the medic’s mind and limiting the medic’s access to the patient’s. While First Aid retrieved the device — which just looked like a black box with a pair of blinking lights and a vent on the side to disperse heat — and Two-Tone unspooled the longest of his cables, First Aid sighed and answered the question.

“I can’t go into the medical details, because of privacy, you understand. The same reason I kicked him out during your check up…”

“I understand,” Two-Tone said, thinking that, while he appreciated the thought on First Aid’s part, Prowl was just going to peruse the memory at his leisure later so it had been a mostly useless gesture.

Which _definitely_ fell under the category of weird and invasive. Ricochet might have occasionally made a habit of practically stalking Two-Tone’s every move in the name of protecting him, but at least his thoughts and memories had been his own.

“Prowl has a… I guess you could call it a personality disorder. Without going into details, it makes him self-centered, unable to connect socially with other mechs, and disconnected from his own emotions. I’ve been worried about you. You’ve already been in his life two cycles longer than any of his other,” something about the medic’s tone or posture spoke of distaste (and what was wrong with selling the only thing he had that was worth anything to try and change his life?), “partners. I just wanted to make sure he hadn’t frightened or hurt you.”

“He’s been okay, I guess. Bossy, but he hasn’t scared me at all.” The weirdest thing was the constant connection, and Prowl’s tendency to just install or delete minor things from his processor without warning, but they’d discussed processor control before signing the contract. Two-Tone would have liked some warnings, but he figured he’d technically agreed to it already. Nothing at all like all the horror stories Ricochet had told him when his twin was still trying to talk him out of putting himself up for sale.

“Alright. It’s not like it’s my place to protest as long as you’re alright with whatever he’s doing, just remember you do have rights. You can tell him no and he is legally required to abide, no matter what sort of contract the two of you have signed.”

“Okay.”

“Two-Tone. I’m serious. He does not have the right to force himself on you, or hurt you in any way, no matter what your current arrangement. Tell me you understand this.

It was a lecture, but Two-Tone could tell First Aid actually cared about this. “I get it. I understand.”

“Good.” They both plugged into the device. “Let’s see your diagnostics.”

Unlike Prowl, whose access was unfettered, and as such he made Two-Tone feel like he was either being smothered by Prowl’s processing power, or like he was being observed through a sniper’s scope, First Aid’s simply was a polite window on his HUD with the text from his diagnostics scrolling by.

First Aid poked and prodded Two-Tone’s frame, matching his reactions to the diagnostics to make sure they were accurate, and asked all the same questions any other medic ever had, then asked for the name of Two-Tone’s normal primary care physician in Polyhex so he could have the medical files forwarded.

“No advanced firewalls. Still factory standard,” First Aid commented. “Now that you’re sexually active, I should install some.”

“He’ll just take them off.” Two-Tone said, shifting uncomfortably. “We agreed that I wouldn’t have any while I belonged to him.”

“Hmm… I can’t say I’m surprised.” First Aid sighed. “I can assure you that his processor is scrupulously free of viruses. Don’t take any other partners until you’ve had proper firewalls installed. Without them you’ve got no protection against anything they might be carrying.”

“Yeah we’ve covered that.”

“I’m going to give you my number,” First Aid said, pushing a contact request file across the connection. “If you have any trouble, I want you to call me.”

Without the software to operate his onboard communications, Two-Tone could save the file but not open it as a contact. He couldn’t even open a note-file to put a sticky on his HUD to remind him to save the number to his contacts when he next had access to Prowl’s tablet because he did not have the notes app. “Could I get that written on a data chip?”

*

*

*

Prowl didn’t have _one_ script for dealing with Barricade.

Prowl had exactly two thousand seven hundred and forty three scripts for dealing with Barricade. Two hundred and twenty one of them were for randomly running into his current partner and superior officer in a hallway, indexed by location and circumstances. He had thirty one scripts regarding dealing with Barricade in some sort of medical context.

None of them quite fit this situation.

“Break your new plaything already? That has to be a record,” Barricade said as he sidled up to Prowl, outside First Aid’s examination room.

Prowl _wanted_ to snap at him. Two-Tone _belonged to him._ But Barricade was his partner and superior officer. Prowl had no less than six reminders on his HUD not to snap at superior officers for any reason. And an additional three reminding him that if he lost another partner, he was going to be evaluated for reconditioning. Again.

“We are here for his initial medical assessment,” Prowl informed him evenly.

Barricade leered.

Which only made Prowl want to rip his face off. Two-Tone was _his._ The thought of Barricade _touching_ Two-Tone made him… Prowl didn’t know what that thought did to him, other than if it happened he was going to murder Barricade, threat of reconditioning or no.

There was, in his evaluation, no further point in actually talking to the other officer, since he couldn’t just tell him to go away.

Barricade obviously felt differently. “So how is he? You take all of them at once, or are you going slowly since you have the time? One by one?”

Prowl didn’t care about privacy, much less Two-Tone’s privacy, but he did not want to talk about his new toy with Barricade at all. “None of your business.”

“Maybe I should ask him.”

Script. Prowl needed a script. Because he was quite certain that “Don’t talk to him,” was not in any permutation of any appropriate script.

Barricade only smiled wide. “Can’t tell me what to do,” he sing-songed. “Maybe we should ask him together, hmm? Find out just which one of us he prefers. Like there’s any doubt, since he wouldn’t even be in your berth if you weren’t paying… how much are you paying again? I’m curious how much such a sweet looking backside goes for right now. Maybe he’d like to make some extra.”

Prowl’s optics narrowed, but his truly impressive growl was interrupted on the first note by an undignified squawk as he was yanked backwards by his doorwing. He barely had time to register Barricade’s smirk before he was thrown into the exam room’s chair and First Aid slammed the door, cutting Prowl off from the hallway.

Attacking medics was not allowed, on threat of reconditioning, so he settled and looked at First Aid curiously. What was this about?

“There are _some things_ you do _not_ uninstall from a mech’s hard drive for _any_ reason, _Prowl,”_ First Aid hissed.

Prowl blinked. If he didn’t know better he’d think First Aid was angry. But First Aid didn’t get angry. _Forceful_ occasionally, but true anger was something Prowl hadn’t thought him capable of. What was he supposed to say?

Two-Tone was still sitting on the examination table, just as confused.

Apparently silence was not the correct response. “What if there’d been an emergency? Even completely setting aside for the moment the likelihood that _you’re_ the one he’d need help against, he needs to be able to call in case something unexpected happens!”

Prowl did have a script for dealing with First Aid. One script. It was all he needed: on threat of reconditioning, agree with everything the medic says. But Two-Tone was _his._ “The tablet—”

“Isn’t enough,” First Aid interrupted. “What if it’s lost, or broken, or otherwise unavailable? The tablet does not cover every contingency. And let’s return for the moment to the case where _you are the problem.”_

Prowl did not think he was a problem or danger to Two-Tone. He wasn’t going to damage his toy, had given him the safewords and ensured he’d use them. Two-Tone belonged to him though. He could do what he wanted, within what was allowed by the law, as long as Two-Tone didn’t use a safeword to object. “I am not a threat to Two-Tone. I bought him. I am not going to damage him.”

First Aid actually growled. Interesting. “That level of helplessness is _not allowed._ You may have bought him — which itself I find morally questionable — but that does not entitle you to treat him like he is solely your plaything. The fact that you are forbidding him from installing firewalls is bad enough!”

“You are well aware of my kinks regarding mental openness.”

“I am aware, as much as I sometimes wish otherwise. Sealbreaking is your _kink,”_ the medic scoffed. “A lack of firewalls is your _fetish.”_ Prowl had no counter argument to that, given the respective definitions of the words. “And I am not objecting to that because you have already both discussed it and taken appropriate precautions to protect him.” _Mine,_ Prowl thought. Even if the firewalls hadn’t been an issue, he would not have allowed _his_ toy other partners while he owned him. “But _this_ sort of helplessness is _not allowed,_ you hear me? There are certain programs you do _not_ uninstall from a processor. Ever.”

When he’d taken the programming for communications, Prowl had considered emergencies, but thought that leaving Two-Tone access via the tablet was enough. After all, there would be no emergencies while Prowl was present, and Two-Tone would have access to the computer the rest of the time. But First Aid did have a point, even if that (very logical) objection did not seem to be what was upsetting the medic. He liked helplessness in his sexual partners, holding them down, drowning them in pleasure, and playing their frames until they screamed and past experience (including the experiences he had already had interfacing with Two-Tone) had indicated that they enjoyed the treatment. But First Aid seemed to think he had gone too far this time.

Okay, new rule: There are certain programs he was not allowed to uninstall from a mech’s processor under any circumstance. Using prisoner protocols to block access to them, however, should still be alright, as long as said protocols weren’t in use while Prowl was not present and would deactivate if Two-Tone used the caesium safeword.

All he needed now was to know which programs were off limits. “Do you have a list?”

First Aid made a sound of frustration. Which was interesting because, like anger, Prowl had never seen First Aid frustrated by anything. He wasn’t sure what First Aid could be frustrated at though; Prowl had agreed to the new boundary.

In a manner that looked tentative, Two-Tone reached out to touch the medic’s arm. “Hey,” he said quietly. “No real harm. You put the essentials back, he doesn’t take them away again, and we’re all good, right?”

That deflated the medic. He turned back to his patient. “Two-Tone, sweetie, this is serious. Why are you okay with it?”

Two-Tone was looking at Prowl, which as far as Prowl knew was a breach of conversational etiquette. You looked at who you were talking to, but you didn’t stare. “Because he’s trying, and I don’t want to go back.”

First Aid didn’t have anything to say to that and finished the check up, and started pulling out backup copies of whatever he deemed “essentials”. Prowl started to get up out of the chair, but First Aid snapped at him to _stay right there mister,_ so instead he pulled up the arrest protocols that would cut off a suspect’s access to communications and other programs and made a copy to start modifying.

Right now they were set to activate upon being installed and deactivated only by the jail warden’s authorization code, upon which time they would self-delete when the suspect was released. This did not suit Prowl’s purposes. First he got rid of the self-deletion commands then turned his attention to the trickier programming of activation and deactivation triggers. Proximity was not a valid trigger. Time, however, was. He programmed it so that Two-Tone could not access anything during the joors where Prowl was home, with several breems on either side as a grace period in case Prowl needed to leave early or got home late, or to allow Two-Tone to exit a conversation gracefully when Prowl did arrive. Then he programmed both his own authorization code and Two-Tone’s use of the caesium safeword as deactivation triggers, which would not allow the restrictive programming to become active again until Prowl’s authorization code was used to reactivate it. Then he set his tactical systems to analysing and debugging the new program right as First Aid was finishing up and giving Two-Tone his contact information.

“And remember not to hesitate to call me if you need anything,” First Aid glared in Prowl’s direction. “I mean it. Anything.”

“Okay.”

Prowl had hoped Barricade would have lost interest in harassing him while First Aid said his piece, but nope. As soon as he opened the door, there he was: lounging against the wall looking smug and gleeful.

His smile widened when he saw Two-Tone following behind Prowl. “Hello!”

Prowl almost snapped again, but First Aid glared. Right. Social interaction was healthy, and overly possessive behavior in public was not. Even if Barricade was _talking to_ ** _his_** _toy._

“Hello,” said the smaller mech.

“I’m Barricade. I work with Prowl.”

“Oh,” Two-Tone brightened, looking more confident. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise. Let me give you my number, that way you can call me and we can talk later,” Barricade smiled and Prowl felt his own claws dig into his palm and forced himself to unclench his hands.

“Okay. Thank you.”

Satisfied, First Aid ducked back into the exam room, leaving them to it.

As soon as the door had closed, Prowl grabbed Two-Tone’s arm and pulled him away from Barricade and down the corridor. “Goodbye, Barricade. We have another appointment soon.”

Only partially a deception. It wasn’t precisely an _appointment,_ but Prowl had scheduled time to perform association training for Two-Tone in regards to tolerating Prowl’s desire to be constantly networked.

“Of course,” Barricade leered where Two-Tone couldn’t see. _I am not allowed to rip my partner’s face off,_ Prowl reminded himself. “I wouldn’t want to make you late.”

“Hey,” Two-Tone protested when they when they turned the corner, out of Barricade’s sight. “That—”

“Don’t talk to him,” Prowl ordered sharply.

“Why not?”

 _Because I said so,_ which to Prowl was more than enough reason. Two-Tone was _his;_ he should _obey._ Because it was what Prowl wanted should be all the reason Two-Tone needed. He suspected his toy would want additional reasons, however, and fortunately Prowl had them, and if providing them would be of any help in keeping Two-Tone away from Barricade and vice versa, then it was only logical he do so.

“His MO is to rescue young, impressionable, inexperienced mechs,” _like you,_ “from the attentions of a more forward sexual aggressor,” _like me,_ “then leverage one-sided network connections with his victim in exchange for his help.”

“You’re talking like he’s some sort of… sexual predator.”

Prowl had never applied that definition to Barricade before, but found the term extremely apt. “The fact that what he does is legal does not make the behavior any less predatory.”

Two-Tone trotted a few steps so he was walking next to Prowl. “What about what you do? It’s legal too, but is it predatory?”

“First Aid thinks so.”

*

*

*

“…After that we just went to a nearby park, one with lovers’ nooks,” Two-Tone finished up narrating his adventure with the doctor’s visit to Ricochet. His breakfast had been waiting for him again, this time on the table next to the berth. “I thought he was gonna frag me there but he just found an empty nook where we just sat under one of the crystal formations with me kinda laying across his lap and he networked, just like I was his favorite tablet, no making sparks. He petted me for almost two shifts, then we came home. He fragged me then. ALL the sparks. Hasn’t said more than twenty words.”

“So you’ve got communications now?”

“Communications, contacts, subspace access, camera and screenshots, navigation, alarms, diagnostics display, HUD reminders. Still none of the fun extras; they ain’t allowed. He installed this program that locks it all down just after he gets home from work, then unlocks it just after he leaves.” Two-Tone hummed happily. StoryDrive, one of the two apps Prowl had given him access to on the tablet that he’d never heard of before, had turned out to be a subscription to both Praxus’ and Cybertron’s main digital libraries, complete with the ability to text-chat live with a librarian. Which is what he was doing now, trying to track down a book or six on the violino. Orion was great help! Already he had three, mostly on the history of the instrument. “Supposedly I can turn the blocker off if needed, unlock my apps, but if I do so outside an emergency then there’ll be consequences.”

“But you’re still okay?”

“More than,” Two-Tone said. “I don’t really get what First Aid and you are so worried about. He’s possessive and weird, but so are you, bro.”

 _“Protective,”_ Ricochet corrected, voice turning a bit tinny as the tablet’s speakers adjusted. Despite having access to it, Two-Tone thought he really shouldn’t be using his onboard comsuite. First Aid had gotten it back for him so he could call in case of emergencies. Prowl had acquiesced, seemingly just because the medic was upset, and come up with a new way to enforce his will. Two-Tone thought that if he voluntarily refrained from using those programs as much as possible, he’d be doing his part to keep them both happy. “I ain’t possessive.”

“But you don’t deny you’re weird.”

“Che.” In the background Two-Tone heard the shower switch on; _Ricochet_ was definitely using his onboard comsuite to talk while he got ready to report to training. “You have any plans for this cycle? At least until he gets home — after that your plans are to indulge his every whim and frag as many times as possible.”

Two-Tone laughed. “Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you take advantage, if you were me? Whatever his failings, he is fantastic in the berth. As for before he gets home: first I’m supposed to put everything I’ve currently got piled up on the table next to the bed in a box that fits under it, _then_ I,” he made a happy rev of his engine, “have reading to do. About the _violino._ I have,” he checked his library queue and saw the librarian had added another book, “ _four_ books, all about this wonderful, marvelous instrument. History, construction and maintenance, basic skills. The librarian has a bunch of suggestions for things on NetVid that might help too.” More happy revving.

“Well I’m glad to see things are working out for you.” The shower cut off. “Call me if you get in trouble. You know I will come out to Praxus and beat his aft if I need to.”

“Yeah I know it. Later Rico!”

“Bye Two-Twit.”

Two-Tone didn’t even let the old, obnoxious nickname bother him; he had a pile of books to read and vids he needed to watch!

When Prowl came home — several breems late; Two-Tone had been taking notes, but he’d had just enough warning to save his notes before his HUD was blanked by the restriction program — Two-Tone was curled up on the bed watching a violino soloist swaying to something jazzy. He couldn’t wait to be able to do that!

He didn’t even notice Prowl had actually gotten home until the larger mech sat on the bed next to him, placing his hand possessively between Two-Tone’s smaller doorwings. Willing and eager, Two-Tone slid his panels aside, waving his doorwings happily. “I’ll turn this off.”

“Finish it,” Prowl ordered, unspooling one of his cables with a soft hiss and plugging into Two-Tone’s topmost port. Immediately the weight of Prowl’s regard pressed against Two-Tone’s mind. Two-Tone got the strange double image of looking down on himself from Prowl’s perspective, and could feel Prowl watching the violino player through his optic band.

Two-Tone hummed contentedly when Prowl started to pet him. He had to wonder if that’s what the previous cycle at the park had been for.

Then, like now, they _really_ hadn’t done anything physical, just sat there — not too differently than they were now — and connected. Two-Tone had almost just dozed, sprawled over Prowl’s lap, and enjoyed being petted. The park had been sunny and warm and pleasant. He’d even enjoyed Prowl’s casual riffling through his thoughts. He had watched as Prowl installed the restrictions on the apps First Aid had restored. It had been the opposite of unpleasant. And now Two-Tone looked forward to feeling Prowl’s mind against his.

Possessive and restrictive and invasive as Prowl was, Two-Tone was starting to feel like a favored pet rather than a slave.

 _It’s a good word._ Prowl’s mental voice was no longer disturbing, though Two-Tone still had issues with Prowl responding verbally to unspoken thoughts. _Descriptive and as potentially accurate as “slave”, but with different connotations. Would you prefer I use it?_

Two-Tone had been prepared to be called much worse than even “slave”. _Sure, mech. Anything you want me to call you?_

_Prowl._

That settled that.

Of course Prowl couldn’t let the moment pass without doing something weird and invasive.

Two-Tone felt the mech’s remaining cables spill from his wrist out over his back. They wiggled and twitched, looking for his ports of their own accord but mostly only succeeding in dragging themselves over the sensitive and sensitized components teasingly. Two-Tone shivered, electricity starting to build beneath his plating in anticipation. Even the sight of himself, top port filled, through Prowl’s perspective, was wanton and erotic.

_Mine._

And, oh right. Owned.

It wasn’t enough to drag him away from watching the violino player, not if Prowl wasn’t going to demand his attention. She looked so serene, so consumed by the music and movement… _That_ was what he wanted, more than anything in existence.

Prowl was making a good case for runner up though, in Two-Tone’s desires. Even absorbed in watching the complicated bow work, he mewed and his fans clicked on to spill excess heat when Prowl started guiding his cords in their search for Two-Tone’s ports, opening up the bandwidth between them. He couldn’t help but hiss, or gasp or mew as each one clicked home, filling him up. He could distantly feel Prowl’s desire, his own arousal at what he was doing, but it wasn’t an all-consuming onslaught of electric sensations that blocked out the physical ones, and for the first time Two-Tone could really _feel_ how the sharp prongs sat in his receptors, snug and tight. He _felt_ the hair-thin feeler-wires (which so far Prowl had held back during casual networking) unfurling from the sides of those prongs and wiggling into his circuits, intertwining with his nervous system, making him physically as well as mentally one of Prowl’s systems.

Prowl’s mind expanded into Two-Tone’s processors, using his pet’s random access memory to run his own programs.

And yet when Two-Tone sent the thought that maybe he should be paying attention to _Prowl,_ to whatever he was using Two-Tone’s hard drive for, instead of the sensuous curves and lines of a stranger dancing on the tablet’s screen, he got back the sharp command to finish watching his vid.

So he was a part of Prowl that laid there, enjoying, nearly lost in the music. Prowl… shuddered, his own fans clicking on and armor flaring to show off the play of electricity over his struts and wires.

 _It sounds different, listening through your systems…_ The thought, no different than hundreds they had exchanged in the park, no different than the ones they had just previously exchanged, trickled down the wide-open connections as data that set fire to sensors and pushed both their charge higher. Music, sensation, data… it was too much for Two-Tone. He overloaded as the song hit its crescendo.

Prowl kept him from crashing and requiring a reboot, refusing to allow whatever he was doing be interrupted, so instead Two-Tone lay there, dazed and twitching, trying to remember which way was up.

He _did_ cry out when Prowl popped open the cover on his right wrist and started pulling his cords out. They wiggled, curling and twisting together, winding around Prowl’s fingers without directed purpose. Even if the tiny myomer muscular wires had been strong enough to lift and heft themselves over Prowl’s shoulders or around his waist, Two-Tone didn’t have the control. They responded to electricity automatically, but Two-Tone didn’t have the circuits to control the electric flow down the wires sheathing his data cables. The myomer wires were expanding and contracting in an almost random manner depending on data flow and EM fluctuations in their fields. Two-Tone had heard of mechs with thicker, more developed data cords, who had circuits running down their length to control them consciously, and armor to protect those circuits, turning them into truly prehensile limbs, but he wasn’t one of them. His design left the thousands, hundreds of thousands of myomer wires exposed to Prowl’s gentle claws, making the still mostly-insensate Two-Tone scream as his entire neural network was turned to _pleasure._

Prowl hummed in satisfaction, that too thrumming through Two-Tone’s mind and making him writhe.

Desperately he scratched at Prowl’s firewalls, weakly trying to flay the other’s mind and expose his inner workings as much as Two-Tone was exposed to his owner’s mental gaze. But all he succeeded in doing was eliciting an amused chuckle that vibrated across abused audios and circuits.

He screamed as it became too much and electricity erupted from his every wire and circuit, playing almost painfully across his plating. Darkness clawed at him but Prowl, relentless controlling Prowl, kept it at bay. Pleasure and pain became a single thing, a single sensation, and Prowl only hummed in pleasure.

Prowl wasn’t interested in taking Two-Tone’s cords and plugging them into his own back; the thought brought him no pleasure Two-Tone could see. Instead he played with them while his pet screamed and writhed. He separated them out, two and two and two, and braided them together, whiting out Two-Tone’s optic band in the process. He couldn’t even gather together enough processing power to beg. Prowl was using most of it, and occupying the rest with pleasure. It was an entirely different sort of helplessness, mental instead of just physical, one he couldn’t even pull together enough coherence to dislike.

He overloaded.

This time when he could think again, he could hear nothing but the twin roars of their overheated systems, Prowl panting hot breaths over his audial horn.

 _Mine,_ the thought bled into Two-Tone’s ragged and scattered ones. _Mine. Mine._ **_MINE._ **

He saw himself, Prowl’s vision imposing itself fully in Two-Tone’s sightless perceptions, pulled across the larger mech’s lap. Pleasingly helpless, owned, completely _MINE_ to do with what he willed. Charge danced as constantly over Prowl’s plating as it did Two-Tone’s as he… the vision shattered into thousands of fantasies and Two-Tone’s systems couldn’t take it any longer…

He overloaded one last time, and this time even being slaved to Prowl’s systems and will couldn't keep him from crashing down into darkness.

*

*

*

_Don’t move._

Two-Tone tried to obey as he finished his reboot sequence, but _pleasure-pain_ shot through his cords. He twitched, sending that sensation cascading up the full-stretched- _filled_ ports along his spine and pulling on endostructure and joints of his torso arms and doorwings. Pulling and aching, and then finally _exploding_ with pleasure that sent him into an overload that was only partially aftershocks.

_Beautiful._

Their fans roared in the quiet. Possessive-gentle, Prowl petted down the black plating of the smaller mech’s chest. Every circuit still felt electrified and raw and Two-Tone started to arch, lean into the touch, begging for stimulation but Prowl pressed on his bumper, holding him down.

_Still. Let your systems recover, or you will hurt yourself. You are oversensitized and low on energy. Calm, and I will feed you._

Two-Tone let himself go limp in Prowl’s arms, who resumed his soothing petting after a klik.

As his systems calmed he became more aware of his position, and why every shift or shudder or twitch of doorwings sent _pleasure/pain_ skittering down his sensornet and made it impossible to calm fully or convince his fans to shut off. Prowl had fully extended his cords from his wrist and braided them — he remembered that — and then used them to tie his hands and arms behind his back, knots climbing their way decoratively up his arms, through the (very sensitive!) gap at the edge of his doorwings where they locked to his side when he transformed, over the base of his doorwings, and to his shoulders. All four limbs were tied in a stretching, borderline painful position. Every time the cords crossed over his spinal struts, Prowl had knotted them to his own, locking them into the plugs. Two-Tone could feel the feelers on his own prongs digging into the treads of one of his tires, trying to find wires and circuits to tap into.

Prowl was holding him against his chest, wrapping his arms around the smaller mech to pet the central seams of his chest.

As soon as Two-Tone had taken in his position, evaluating the pleasures and pains of what Prowl had done to him while he’d been rebooting, Prowl asked for a word.

 _Argon,_ Two-Tone thought back, because he was tied very tightly, in a very intimate way and if he moved carelessly he could damage himself and he didn’t think he had the peace of mind or ability to stay still to tolerate Prowl doing anymore of… whatever this was, even if he didn’t have any more cords for him to use. Right now, though, he was tingly and mostly fine. He didn’t need Prowl to stop.

Belatedly realizing he still hadn’t turned on his optic band, he did so now, looking up into Prowl’s desire-darkened gold optics.

 _Good pet._ Claws petted soothingly over his chest again. _No more ties tonight. Fuel first, then I have other plans._

What sort of plans Prowl could still have with Two-Tone tied up like this, he couldn’t imagine. But Prowl’s _desire_ sent shivers through his endostructure, and sparks of _pleasure-pain_ through his doors, arms, plugs and cords.

 _Calm,_ Prowl reminded him. _Calm, and open your mouth so you can drink._

Two-Tone obeyed and was rewarded with a gentle sip of ascorbic acid flavored energon. Suddenly fuel-hunger overwhelmed pleasure, pain, even the fact that his systems were still _near-overload;_ all that mattered was getting that fuel. His fuel levels were only at 19%, but now climbing slowly, as long as he lay passively and let Prowl feed him.

He couldn’t even squirm at his own helplessness. If he squirmed, he sent electric sensations through his entire neural net and Prowl took the cube away until he calmed and their fans quieted.

He found himself slipping into a mental state that was almost trancelike, aroused and hovering on the edge of pain and helpless, with nothing to focus on except Prowl’s calm and soothing petting, claws stroking over his neck cables and intake tubes, and the cube of sour fuel.

_Good pet._

When they were done, Prowl fed him a second, exactly the same. Good as it was, it kind of pulled Two-Tone out the trance… why did Prowl keep feeding him ascorbic acid flavored energon?... but the thought was dim and unformed and Two-Tone let himself float back into pleasure.

 _Perfect,_ Prowl purred possessively. _Now…_ Two-Tone looked up into Prowl’s dark gold optics, and Prowl’s thought was stuttered to a halt by whatever he was seeing reflected in Two-Tone’s optic band. _Mine,_ he thought instead. Prowl’s overload slammed into him down their wide open network connection without any further warning than that. Two-Tone howled as Prowl’s engine downshifted into a roar. _Mine._

Their overload faded more slowly than before.

 _Perfect,_ Prowl thought again when they could both think coherent thoughts. _Too perfect to keep calling you Two-Tone._

 _Wha’s wrong with m’name,_ Two-Tone slurred even in his thoughts, too many of his circuits still overenergized to support real data.

 _Nothing. It’s a perfectly good name,_ that Two-Tone could feel was a lie; Prowl’s disapproval was discernable despite his thought-words, _but it’s not a_ **_pet’s_ ** _name._ He stroked down Two-Tone’s chest plating. He shifted, pushing Two-Tone off his chest and holding him up so he could slither out from behind him. Two-Tone tensed. _Relax. I won’t drop you. Just stay calm and let me move you._

It was a conscious effort, because Prowl’s movements kept tugging gently at the cords secured in the ports on his back, which tugged at the network of knots woven through them that secured his arms and doorwings in place, which in turn made Two-Tone gasp and moan at the stimulation to his cords.

“Beautiful,” Prowl whispered when he had Two-Tone arranged to his liking, in much the same position he had held him the other night, kowtowing, hands bound and ports vulnerable… except they were already filled, very filled, with _Prowl,_ who rested his own, partially restrained hand on the sixth, unoccupied port, covering it possessively. _You’re beautiful,_ the thought was accompanied by an image of him, restrained and quivering. The cords were the gleaming black of myomer against the matte black of his plating. Sparks danced over his frame, glowed through the gaps in his armor. Prowl’s emotions leaked through with the image. To him, Two-Tone was a study in strength and vulnerability and completely and utterly _his._ One fantasy gained strength and substance and finally overlaid itself on Prowl’s vision with enough clarity for Two-Tone to see it: Prowl wanted to weave more wires and cords around him, tie down his legs, weave wires through his rear axle assemblies and artistically put knots on every erotic joint and seam until Two-Tone was completely entwined, unable to move; a work of art, a study in Prowl’s control. “What shall I call you pet? It needs to be a name as beautiful as you are right now.”

Possibilities started flitting behind those firewalls, and Two-Tone panicked. Frame, processor — he’d agreed to Prowl controlling those, but not his _identity._ Not his sense of self. That was too much! Two-Tone was trying to remake himself, yes, but not to Prowl’s design!

 _JAZZ!_ He yelled across their network connection, not really knowing why the panic had brought melodies of the performer from earlier so strongly to the forefront. That, that performer dancing on the stage, so confident, in control and skilled even as she gave herself over to her instrument and the music… that was who he wanted to be. Not whatever Prowl was planning on making him into. _If Two-Tone ain’t gonna cut it, you_ **_will_ ** _call me Jazz._

Prowl’s perception of Two-Tone as _strength controlled_ increased, electricity starting to crackle over him, beneath his white plating… _Jazz then…_ and Prowl’s overload dragged them both into darkness.

*

*

*

Two-Tone — _Jazz_ woke up in a collar. Of course he did.


	2. Act Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You see that **Body Modification** tag? That starts this chapter, and it may be (technically) temporary in that it doesn't require special expertise or a medic to put things back where they belong, but some of it's pretty invasive. Consider that this chapter's primary warning.
> 
> Well that, and the fact that Prowl still doesn't know how to ask.

Two kilocycles later, Jazz had gotten used to partially booting up before Prowl’s alarm went off, despite the fact that his own alarm was ineffective until after Prowl left for work.  He usually dozed until Prowl either woke him fully, or left. Most of the time, Prowl came out of recharge without a word. He held Jazz and riffled through his sleepy thoughts and dreams — checking how Jazz had fared after the night’s activities, whatever they had been — before unplugging from his pet’s topmost port. Then he used the chastity clasps he’d installed to lock all Jazz’s panels, both on his back and wrist, closed for the cycle, and finally mixed up a cube for Jazz’s breakfast and left it on the table next to the berth. All without disturbing Jazz. Then Prowl left for work without a word. Most of the time.

Sometimes, though, he’d forcibly reboot Jazz (an experience that never became less shocking or more pleasant) on a whim, waking him to give him commands or just to feed him personally. Prowl liked hand feeding Jazz. Which was great, no matter what he was fed. But he also mixed up the rest of Jazz’s meals, and he was getting really, really sick of ascorbic flavored energon. It was hard to protest the flavor when Prowl was there, because Jazz was invariably borderline insensate with pleasure from the treatment. Definitely a kink, though the books Jazz had found on StoryDrive on the subject focused on handfeeding as a sort of _caring for the submissive_ kink, where for Prowl it was definitely about control.

Jazz had learned to wake early and wait for Prowl to decide what kind of morning they were going to have, before going back into recharge until Ricochet called him at a more reasonable joor.

So far everything was normal, even if this was going to be his first cycle off. Allowed out of the apartment! Woot! He couldn’t bring himself to doze. This time, Jazz powered on his visor and absently closed his panels, left open when he’d fallen into recharge last night, except the top, still occupied one. His wrist panel was already locked closed; Prowl hadn’t pulled out his cables to tie him with them, which seemed to be his only real interest in them. Idly Jazz examined the chastity lock on his wrist as he had many times since Prowl had put it on him. It wrapped around his entire wrist, an armor-grade lacework of gold colored metal that was screwed directly into his armor, except over the panel, where delicate-strong transforming mechanisms reached from one anchor point to the other, keeping the pattern unbroken. It was locked closed with no visible seams. When Prowl gave it the authorization code, tiny t-cogs would fold the locking portion away, allowing the panel beneath to be opened. Jazz supposed screwing it into his armor must have hurt, but he honestly didn’t remember much about the physical aspects of Prowl installing it; he’d been too busy screaming for an entirely different reason.

There was a matching, purely decorative cuff on his other wrist that did nothing but call to mind the old stories of slave-mechs and how their owners marked them.

By comparison, the ones screwed onto his back were much simpler. They were black, for one, and weren’t as obvious against his plating. No less decorative, from what Jazz had seen by twisting awkwardly to catch glimpses in the mirror in the washracks, but instead of the complicated transforming lock the one on his wrist had, those had simple mechanical swing clasps. Jazz could unlock them easily, if he could reach them. He couldn’t, but the temptation to try never ceased, and was charge-building all on its own.

When Jazz had demanded to know how the Pit he was supposed to self-service, Prowl had responded with a bare smirk that he wasn’t. Jazz wasn’t just forbidden from taking other partners; Prowl was to be Jazz’s only source of sexual satisfaction. Jazz saw Prowl’s optics darken with pleasure at the thought that his pet would be needy and unsatisfied and desperate for a frag until Prowl came home to take his pleasure. He huffed in amusement/exasperation at the memory.

Movement in response made Jazz set aside his annoyance — which was rapidly becoming _fond_ annoyance — at Prowl’s possessive and controlling kinks to focus on what was going on in the darkened room.

Instead of being pulled into Prowl’s chest facing him with Prowl’s arms wrapped around him (which was a more comfortable position for Prowl to reach his topmost port with his cord in), Jazz had somehow ended up with Prowl at his back, spooned against the larger mech. Prowl still had his arms wrapped around him, and the cord plugged into Jazz wound several times around Prowl’s wrist and arm so it wouldn’t tangle with anything in its journey to Jazz’s back. The other four were hanging only partway out, curling and twitching randomly in the air.

This was the first time Jazz had been able to take the time to examine Prowl’s cords in detail. The myomer wires, instead of being wrapped around the fiberoptic data cable within in an even, single layer, were arranged in thicker bundles, which were then braided into the sensitive-to-touch protective sheath they were there to provide. The result was that the individual cords were much thicker than Jazz’s were. But that wasn’t the extent of the differences. Even dark as it was, Jazz could see an impossibly delicate network of exposed gold wires braided around the myomer, ends anchored in evenly spaced, tiny circles of black armor Jazz had to presume hid just as tiny circuits. They weren’t the thick, fully armored cables Jazz had heard librarian, hacker, and communications models hid within their torsos, but when Jazz reached out and offered his hand to one of the free-hanging cords, it twined around his fingers with definite purpose and knotted itself possessively around Jazz’s wrist. He wondered what model Prowl was. He looked like a standard Praxan frametype, a police model built for speed and strength, but underneath his armor it was obvious he wasn’t typical at all. Someone had designed him for something different, something nonstandard.

Then the plug around his wrist drew back and stabbed unerringly into a gap in the armor on Jazz’s forearm, immediately extending feelers into the circuits and wires there. Jazz shouted in alarm and pain… and pleasure. Sparks leapt from his plating, crawling along Prowl’s cord. There was no receptacle there for it, so it did nothing for increasing the data transmitted between the two paramours, but Jazz could _feel_ it, sharp and painful and physically attaching him to Prowl, at the mercy of whatever electric onslaught he decided to send down the cord. He groaned in pleasure, already halfway to overload.

Prowl was awake now, Jazz could feel him watching, riffling through his memory of what had happened.

 _You like this?_ he asked neutrally. _This is one item on a list of sexual activities I am not allowed (First Aid/threat of reconditioning) to perform without the explicit consent of my partner(toy/pet), no matter what I read in their/your thoughts. I need you to give me a safeword and permission to continue._

 _Helium!_ Jazz screamed back. _Primus Prowl! Whatever you need, just_ **_don’t stop!_ **

_Very well._

Prowl opened Jazz’s diagnostics and Jazz barely had a moment to wonder why.

In rapid succession Prowl’s remaining three datacords stabbed into three more gaps in Jazz’s armor. Jazz’s howl of pain turned to pleasure as Prowl started transmitting down the cables. Jazz wasn’t receiving the data, but the electric signals were forced into Jazz’s system as undiluted charge, forcing arousal. Lightning danced over, under Jazz’s plating. Ozone filled the air as he writhed, vision already entirely whited out. There was no gap, no break, just Prowl forcing him to overload and beyond. Jazz’s breakers tripped, but the charge wasn’t being generated by his own systems. Prowl held him there, screaming as his body started not just to overheat, but to melt. Systems began shutting down to avoid damage…

And it cut off.

Jazz was left in a smoking heap on the berth, twitching senselessly. He barely noticed the four plugs withdrawing from his circuits, though he could tell that Prowl relished the whine he made at the loss of the sharp prongs.

Then Prowl gathered Jazz’s limp body into his arms, wrapping him in the blankets to ward off the temperature fluctuations his systems were going through, trying and for the moment failing to reset properly, and held him close. Gentle hands petted down his plating, possessive, yes, but also comforting.

Prowl always did that, Jazz thought almost randomly as his processor rebooted one circuit at a time. No matter what he did to Jazz, he always stayed and cared for him afterwards. He riffled through Jazz’s thoughts to check how he was, mentally and physically. He petted and held Jazz like he was precious and protected, grounding Jazz and guarding him from all harm. As though he actually cared. Whether it was something Prowl had been told to do, and now just did by rote, or whether he cared enough about — if not what Jazz wanted and liked — his pet’s physical and mental health to do something he didn’t understand, Jazz didn’t know; he appreciated it anyway. Prowl was, Jazz thought, self centered, but not selfish in regards to sexual pleasure and his partners. Everything he did was in pursuit of his own gratification, but harming others even by accident brought him no pleasure.

 _Are you recovered?_ Prowl asked with no inflection, like it didn’t matter to him one way or another.

 _You’re the one who’s got access to my diagnostic display._ It wasn’t time for Prowl to leave yet, so the restriction programming was still in effect; Jazz couldn’t see his own diagnostics.

_All of your systems are at 96% capacity or higher, and your thoughts seem to indicate you are mentally recuperating. However as that activity can scramble mental processes more than usual, I am obliged to check. Are you recovered?_

Jazz laughed. “Yeah Prowl. I’m good.” Surprisingly, given how much damage that _could_ have done to him, he was _more_ than good; the electricity had pulled his entire myomer muscular system to point of nearly breaking his endostructure, but the release had left him limp and relaxed in a way he wouldn’t be able to achieve in any other way. He still needed to collate his data to make sure he hadn’t lost anything important, but his processing speed also seemed to have picked up in the aftermath.

_I will start running the compilation program for you. It should finish before Bluestreak picks you up for your playdate._

_What? No — Prowl!_ …His protest came too late. Prowl had already started the long boot-cycle that would clean up his processor, organize Jazz’s data, and attempt to recover anything that had been corrupted. Jazz lay limp, optical sensors shut off, audios shut off, and unable to move while the program ran. Prowl unplugged and got up, completely unaffected by the morning’s activities.

Three and a half joors later, the program finished and Jazz could compare the results to his last backup. He snorted. Prowl’s electric onslaught had wiped only unrecoverably corrupted files stored in secondary databanks. Typical.

He grimaced as he noticed the cube of fuel Prowl had left for him was another ascorbic acid flavored one. He bypassed it in favor of the object on top of the tablet and the note Prowl had left on the computer itself.

> _This cycle is your free cycle. I have unlocked your collar; replace it with the goldsilk one before you leave. I added locks to the latches on your back. Bluestreak should arrive at the start of the second shift. He is your designated guide and social acquaintance. I have given you access to a small stipend for frivolous purchases. Remember that whatever you buy has to fit in your box under the bed._

Jazz looked over the scrap of goldsilk. It was more of a decorative choker than a collar like the one he was currently wearing. A nonfunctional lock-shaped pendant that hung from the center right where it would sit over Jazz’s collar strut was all that differentiated it from any other fashion statement. Compared to the thick, gold metal ring that was Jazz’s normal collar, with the heavy ring hanging at the front for Prowl to attach a leash or other restraint to (he hadn’t yet, but the ring was still there so he could), it was a polite, discreet declaration of Prowl’s ownership. Given that Jazz was still wearing perfectly visible chastity locks, he wasn’t certain whether he appreciated the thought or not.

He pushed the button that would transform the collar he was wearing into an easily pocketed cube of metal. It was unlocked so it did so.

Cybertronians as a rule didn’t wear clothes, unless they were very rich and even that varied by city state. Some wore various ornaments. There was no reason for Jazz to feel naked without the collar, but he did. He quickly subspaced the cube and went to the washrack to take a shower before his guide showed up. While there he checked out the promised locks on his back now hanging from the latches to keep others from opening them. They visually matched the pendant on his new collar, except they were black while the pendant was gold. Jazz huffed in amusement and did a simple dance step to send the little locks swinging erotically. He definitely looked owned, and there was absolutely no doubt about what his owner used him for.

But, and he had to take a second look to really be sure, he also looked sexual and confident, not shy at all. He _felt_ sexual and confident. What reason did he have to be embarrassed by Prowl’s marks of ownership? Prowl was possessive and weird still, but he _enjoyed_ being Prowl’s pet. Why should he be shy about showing that off?

He did another dance-step just to feel them swing as he stepped under the spray of acetone cleanser.

Of course his giddiness with his decorations vanished when someone buzzed for entry. Oh Primus! He looked like a _sex toy!_ He couldn’t go out in public like this!

It wasn’t like he could do anything about it, really. He was dry but he wrapped the (white) towel around him anyway.

The security screen next to the front door had come on, showing a Praxan in nightshift enforcer grey, with blue optics, a red chevron, and other red accents. He’d pinged his identification to the security system when he’d buzzed, so the info window in the lower corner of the screen clearly showed BLUESTREAK, followed by his serial number and enforcer ID. Making sure his towel was securely wrapped around him, Jazz opened the door. “Hi. Bluestreak? Prowl said you were willing to show me around the city.”

“Is that what he said?” The mech laughed, free and easily. “Hi! Yeah, I’m Bluestreak. We can go wherever you want. And we can wait until you’ve dried off. I’m in no hurry; I’ve got all shift.”

“I’m dry.” Prowl used burn-away acetone, which didn’t leave moisture behind. “I’m just,” Jazz felt his frame heat up. Surely the mech could see his collar, the filigree of the wrist-lock, and the matching slave-cuff; why was he so hesitant to let him see the ones on his back.

_You look like a sex toy._

Right. That.

But there was nothing for it. He couldn’t just wear a towel for two shifts. “He’s got… ah… chastity locks on me. I didn’t think about them before, but now I’m kinda dreading stepping out there where everyone can see them.”

“Really? That’s… interesting, I guess.” Bluestreak peered at Jazz’s collar. “You don’t mind? You’re okay? He hasn’t hurt you or anything has he?”

“I’m fine. You don’t need to ask that.” Jazz complained. “Let me just put the towel away. Grabbing it was stupid anyway.”

“Not stupid!” Bluestreaked called after him, stepping inside and closing the door to wait.

Prowl had heated towel racks that kept them dry. They made the towels all sorts of cozy to rub away the oily residue left behind by the burning acetone. Shortly after Jazz had started staying with him, Prowl had begun leaving the heating racks on while he was at work, but Jazz didn’t want to risk leaving them on when no one was home. Jazz threw the towel into the hamper and started turning off lights. He was sure Prowl’s cleaning drone was going to enjoy (if the simple thing was even capable of enjoyment) being able to scrub the floors and other surfaces without Jazz around to step on it.

Jazz edged back out into the common room where he’d left Bluestreak, who was looking at the pile of viddisks which Prowl had never told him to move.

“Okay,” Jazz took a deep breath. “I’m ready.” He hunched his shoulders as he turned to show off the — extremely obvious! — locked latches and completed the circle to face his guide. “How bad?”

Bluestreak looked scandalized so Jazz was not hopeful. “Um…”

“I know! I can’t leave the house like this!”

The grey mech shifted, dipping and twitching his wings anxiously. “Those look like they hurt. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m _fine._ They didn’t hurt at all going in and if they didn’t hurt then, they sure aren’t going to hurt now. Why do people keep assuming he’s going to hurt me? But I can’t leave the apartment like this!”

“Well if you want to stay here,” Bluestreak said, “I’ll stay with you. But,” he looked around at the grey walls and the stark white furnishings and the lack of any sort of visible leisure items, “do you really want to?”

Did Jazz really want to spend his first free cycle — probably his only chance to get out of the apartment for the next two kilocycles — hanging out in the apartment, hiding? He thought of the ascorbic flavored cube Prowl had left for him and grimaced. Not really. He wished he hadn’t been so hasty, throwing the towel in the hamper. It was looking like a good compromise. “Not really. What am I going to do?”

Bluestreak’s optics lingered on the chastity lock on Jazz’s wrist. Self-conscious, Jazz tried to hide it with his other hand, but it didn’t really cover anything. “I know a place where you can get a shawl. They’re a bit pricey, I guess. I’ve never seen anyone who didn’t have a lot of money wearing a shawl, but we can look.”

Jazz didn’t know what he was going to do if they didn’t have one he could afford with the stipend, but it was worth a shot. “And if I’m not going to crawl into a hole and die from embarrassment because they don’t have something I can afford, we need to get energon afterwards. Something sweet. Or bitter.”

Anything but sour.

*

*

*

This was fun!

Jazz kinda felt like he was a rich, pompous aft, but honestly that was part of the enjoyment too. He had breezed into the dressing room without so much as a greeting to the attendant, while Bluestreak pretended to be his porter and apologized for his rudeness. Bluestreak had been giggling as he brought an armful of shawls pushed on him by the attendant. They’d sorted the ones Jazz could afford. Bluestreak took the rest back out to be hung up, and apologized again, before starting to search the store himself “for ones the mech will like”. The attendant was going crazy trying to pin down what his new, obviously eccentric, customer wanted, when in reality the mystifying variety of Bluestreak’s choices came from the indecision of a young mech who’d never thought about _himself wearing clothing_ before. Polyhex was underground after all, with fairly dim lighting throughout the city. Color, outside the entertainment castes anyway, tended towards dark and sober, and clothing was not just weird but shunned for taking up too much space in sometimes narrow tunnels. Jazz wanted to try _everything_ before making his decision.

Bluestreak agreed. He came back with another armful and grinned at what Jazz was currently wearing: orange and purple geometric triangles with a long sparkly purple fringe.

“I like it,” Jazz said lightly.

Bluestreak laughed. “We’ll put it in the maybe pile. Meanwhile what do you think of this one?” He held up one made from a sheer, dark red mylar. It sparkled in the bright lights of the dressing room. “I found it in the discount bin. Don’t ask me why it was there.”

Pretty! Jazz made grabby hands at the fabric.

It wasn’t really soft. In fact it was sorta stiff and scratchy. Jazz slung it over his shoulders anyway.

Definitely scratchy, especially on his doorwings. Probably why it was in the discount bin, given that almost everyone in Praxus had doorwings, and high castes were practically obligated to spread them out wide and take up as much space as possible. Jazz’s were smaller than standard Praxan doorwings to begin with, which made folding them down so the fabric wasn’t pushing so hard against them easy and took care of the only truly intolerable itch.

Unlike the other shawls he’d tried, which hung off his frame in soft waves, softening his angles and hiding his curves, this one was the exact opposite. It was sheer enough to accentuate rather than hide, but solid enough that when Jazz peeked over his shoulder he could only see the tiniest movement of the locks through it. He did a twirl, just to see how it settled.

Nice… very nice! The stiffer cloth didn’t move as much as softer versions, retaining its elegant drape as Jazz twirled again. This time he held up his hands and imagined pulling the bow across his violino, picturing it in the mirror. He liked!

He glanced up to see Bluestreak looking knowingly at him. Jazz grinned, feeling sexy and confident again, rather than exposed.

The attendant wasn’t happy about Jazz choosing such a cheap purchase, but there wasn’t much he could actually do except offer to show him softer, more expensive versions of the same thing. Playing the eccentric, rich aft (and his beleaguered porter) to the hilt, Jazz made his purchase then escaped the shop before he and Bluestreak started giggling again.

“Where to now?” Jazz asked. “Energon, please. I’m starving.” In fact he really shouldn’t have waited even this long to find fuel; Prowl had fed him two cubes last night, but then there was _this morning_ and with the promise of an outing, he’d skipped having ascorbic acid flavored energon _again._

“Hmm…” Bluestreak consulted his navigation systems, or maybe a restaurant finder app. “There’s a bistro further down the esplanade,” he waved down the sidewalk. “Reviews are pretty good. We should be able to find something there.”

“Lead on!”

There was no driving allowed on the esplanade so they walked, not that Jazz wanted to put his new shawl in his subspace to transform. Instead he danced around, even jumping up on the railing to look down at the rust-oil river that ran through Praxus. Praxus River, creatively enough.

The bistro turned out to be an entirely outdoor bar for mild highgrade. Jazz happily spent the last few shanix of his stipend on a glass of energon so sweetened with dissolved hydrocarbons it was practically a syrup. ALL the sweet!

Bluestreak chuckled. “Like a little energon with your rubber and plastic, do you?”

“Didn’t before,” Jazz said, entirely unbothered. “But I figure this’ll be the last time I get something that ain’t ascorbic acid until my next free cycle, a couple of kilocycles from now. Might as well make the most of it.”

“Really? That’s ALL he’s feeding you?” Bluestreak leaned forward slightly. “Any idea why?”

Jazz scoffed. “It’s what I made for myself my first morning. It’s gotten into his processor that I like it. Which I do, but he’s given it to me for every single meal since then. I’m glad to have something that’s not sour!” He laughed.

Instead of being happy like Jazz was though, Bluestreak looked perturbed. “I know I keep asking this, but are you sure you’re okay? If he’s not even giving you different flavors…”

“I’m _fine,”_ Jazz insisted. “I told you: I made it for myself the first cycle. He just thinks that’s what I like and want. And he wants to control… everything, so he doesn’t ask what I want before he makes meals for me. But he hasn’t hurt me or anything. Why does everyone assume he will?”

“Everyone’s just worried for you,” Bluestreak said. “I’m glad I don’t really have to work directly with him, honestly. When he told me you needed socialization and he had chosen me I was terrified of whatever I’d done to attract his attention, but I jumped at the chance to check on you. He’s nasty to… basically everyone, except the captain and his partner, and rumor is that’s because if he lost another partner, or mouthed off to Brass one more time, he was going to be taken for reconditioning. He terrorizes the labs, and he’s got a temper. He’s thrown his desk against the wall so many times there’s permanent dents. The rest of the lab techs there are pretty much afraid of him. And he’s never had a sexual partner who wasn’t a virgin, or one so completely at his nonexistent mercy, before.”

Jazz realized his mouth was hanging open and snapped it closed. “He’s… really like that? People are scared of him?”

“Yeah,” Bluestreak ducked his head. “He’s a psychopath of some flavor. First Aid keeps himself out of the rumor mill of course, but the department profilers are sure it’s only a matter of time before he snaps and starts killing.”

“…” Jazz shook himself. “No. That’s not Prowl. He’s controlling, and he’s got some blindspots, but he doesn’t like hurting people. He won’t hurt me.”

“What about those?” Bluestreak gestured to the gold filigree chastity cuff on Jazz’s wrist.

Jazz huffed. “I told you; it didn’t hurt going in and it certainly doesn’t hurt now.”

“We didn’t spend a joor looking through cloaks because you were happy with them.”

“But I am,” Jazz insisted. “Most of the time I am very happy with them. I was playing with the locks while I took my shower. I liked them and was very happy with them. I even liked that they made me look sexy and owned. It wasn’t until you buzzed that I realized what people would really think when they saw them.”

“He should have,” Bluestreak muttered.

“Like he realizes I’m getting sick of ascorbic acid?” Jazz scoffed. “Prowl will do what he wants to do with me. I’m not afraid of that. Not,” he grinned, “now that I have such a pretty cloak!” Bluestreak chuckled and Jazz leaned forward to say more more seriously, “You really don’t need to worry about me. I’m doing good.”

“That’s a relief to hear.”

“So…” Jazz grinned. “Prowl made you come be my friend? Suppose that means I should get to know you too. What’s your job?”

“Me?” Bluestreak looked surprised. “I’m just a beat cop. Third and fourth shifts. I like it, you meet all sorts of interesting people then.”

“I bet!”

“I also,” Bluestreak whispered conspiratorially, “know where all the best underground nightclubs are. I’m supposed to have you home by the beginning of the fourth shift, but we can spend third having some fun.”

“Mech you read my…” Jazz stuttered over the common saying because, no, Bluestreak hadn’t really read his mind; that was _Prowl’s_ prerogative and privilege and the thought of letting Bluestreak — who he would have probably loved to flirt with, under Ricochet’s watchful optics, as Two-Tone — have access to his ports, or even plugging into one of Bluestreak’s, made him feel like he had cyberants crawling under his plating. “Mind,” he finished awkwardly. He shook away his thoughts. “Sounds like fun!”

“So what should we spend the rest of second doing?” Bluestreak tactfully ignored Jazz’s slip.

“Hmm…” Jazz still had an almost full glass of energon syrup and there was no way he was leaving it behind, but maybe, if they had time, they could just lounge in one of the little parks Jazz kept seeing along the esplanade, overlooking the river. Jazz was enjoying the sun. “Let’s take our time with these,” he held up his glass, “and see where we’re at after that.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bluestreak clinked his glass of light aluminum flavored fuel against Jazz’s in a toast. They both sipped, Jazz revelling in the too-sweet (but not sour!) concoction. “You asked a question about me, now I get to ask one about you. That’s how this works right?”

“Sure, mech.”

“So why—”

“Hello,” a deep tenor interrupted. “Two-Tone? Is that you?” Both mechs looked up. The newcomer was a large, powerful, standard Praxan SWAT frametype painted in police dayshift black and white. “I barely recognized you in that red thing.”

Barricade. _Prowl’s partner._ When they’d first met in First Aid’s clinic that identifier had made Two-Tone feel better about talking to a stranger. But now he knew the only reason Prowl hadn’t been nasty was because he was under threat of being reprogrammed if he wasn’t civil to Barricade. And Prowl’s insight into Barricade’s interfacing habits didn’t exactly help Jazz feel at ease with his presence.

But Jazz didn’t fit Barricade’s victim profile — he didn’t need to be rescued. Didn’t need it. Didn’t want it. Jazz supposed pleasantries couldn’t hurt, and snubbing the mech might count as Prowl being rude to him and Jazz didn’t want Prowl reconditioned.

“Hello, Barricade. I’m answering to Jazz now.” He was actually really happy with his new name. Two-Tone felt… too small, now that he’d been Jazz for two kilocycles. “And isn’t the red thing pretty? I just got it!” He _didn’t_ say why he’d gotten it. It was one thing to talk about the chastity locks with Bluestreak, who’d already seen them when he’d come to Prowl’s apartment to pick him up, but Jazz didn’t want to talk about Prowl’s (or his own) sexual habits with anyone else.

“It is.” Barricade smiled. “I was just walking by and saw you, and when I recognized you I thought I’d stop by and make sure you were alright with everything. Prowl can be difficult after all.”

“Yeah, but no worries. I’m fine. I’m more than fine,” Jazz smiled back. “I’m good!”

“Very good to hear.” Barricade leaned forward, subtly in Jazz’s personal space and the static from his EM field washed over the smaller mech. “Would you like to join me for lunch?”

“Naw,” Jazz declined, not exactly politely but inoffensively. “Blue and I have plans.”

Barricade looked at the other occupant of the table for the first time. “Officer.”

“Hello, Sir.”

“If you change your mind,” he looked back to Jazz, “please let me know. You’ve got my number, right?”

“Yep! Still saved. Have a nice lunch.”

“Good bye.”

Barricade left as quickly as he’d come. Jazz watched him strolling down the esplanade. That was weird. Shouldn’t he be working? Prowl was. Or maybe he wasn’t and was on a lunch break too; he didn’t seem like the type to skip out on work, but what did Jazz know about how dedicated Prowl really was to his job?

Whatever. Jazz brushed the encounter aside and turned back to Bluestreak. “So, you were gonna ask me a question.”

Bluestreak grinned. He really had a nice smile; too bad Jazz couldn’t imagine flirting with him. “I was! So why are you doing this? There’s speculation going all around the station, but I don’t think it’s really because you want to live in a mansion and wear fancy shawls all the time.”

“Isn’t. I’m trying to change castes. Entertainment. Music. Which means learning to play and write and all sorts of things…”

*

*

*

A small corner of Prowl’s processors was dedicated to various prediction threads regarding Jazz’s location, probable activities and mental state. It wasn’t enough diverted RAM to qualify as a “distraction” so Prowl ignored those thought strings in favor of work.

Prowl concentrated on shrapnel distribution. His tactical computer was exquisitely well suited for this task, faster than any other equipment available to the labs, but still slower than Prowl liked. He could calculate the exact trajectories of hundreds of pieces back to their origin points within a few nanokliks, but there were thousands of bits of shrapnel in this case, from multiple sources, and instead of being allowed to visit the crime scene for this, he was being forced to work entirely from photographs and video recordings the other crime scene techs had taken.

Barricade wasn’t a technician. He was one of the full officers attached to the labs whose only distinction was that he was currently tasked with “controlling” Prowl. Prowl sneered at the photograph print outs and the three dimensional model he was building on his desktop computer. He’d noticed when Barricade had slipped out over a joor ago “for lunch, do you want me to bring you anything?” but otherwise hadn’t cared. Now the officer was slipping back in, smelling like hot metal and ozone.

Prowl had a script for when Barricade came back to work smelling like sex. It was summed up as _ignore it._ Commenting on the fact that he was skipping work to pick up drunk tourists wasn’t going to get him anything but a sly retort that he was _being rude, and you don’t want the Captain to hear about anymore rudeness._ Barricade was of limited use in the labs anyway, and Prowl didn’t care about Barricade’s sexual habits. They were predatory, but not illegal. Prowl had no reason to say anything because he had no reason to care. Except…

Except now, wrinkling his nasal ridge as Barricade walked by, Prowl felt disgusted by the evidence that he’d just borderline coerced a network connection out of ~~Jazz~~ someone who hadn’t felt able to protest. What was this? Prowl had never felt disgust for anything before. He wasn’t supposed to be capable of it!

Trying to puzzle out how this was possible took up far more processing power than he could afford to divert from his current task, so Prowl found the root command for those thoughts and ruthlessly deleted it.

Disgust? What disgust?

Still, Prowl did his best to avoid his partner entirely until he finished the digital model he was working on, filling in the trajectories of all the shrapnel, and left, well after the end of the second shift.

Jazz was still out. Prowl opened his comlink to call him, or Bluestreak, then shut it down. He’d told Bluestreak to have Jazz back by the beginning of fourth shift to sleep. He still had a joor left. He avoided stepping on the disk shaped cleaning drone as it responded to Prowl’s entry by scurrying back to its recharging stand under Prowl’s berth.

He had no reason to wonder where Jazz was, what he was doing… but he stood at the entry of the bedroom, curling his claws into his palms anyway. Jazz was allowed to be out. This was his free cycle. He didn’t need to service Prowl this cycle at all, and still had done so this morning. There was no reason to feel like he was _missing._

That didn’t stop Prowl from wanting to chain his absent, _misbehaving pet_ to the berth, where he’d be _right where he was supposed to be_ and not out wherever he was now, doing whatever he was now. He needed a chain… Prowl realized his fans were running and shook himself out of the fantasy. Jazz wasn’t misbehaving. Bluestreak was a suitable chaperone and social contact. Prowl did not care what he did during his time off, as long as he didn’t interface with anyone. Which he couldn’t. Prowl had made sure of that.

He retrieved the cube of fuel Jazz had left next to the bed, untouched. Why hadn’t he drunk his breakfast?

It didn’t matter. Prowl would feed it to him  ~~when he got home~~ tomorrow.

He settled on the bed and picked up the tablet left next to the cube. Logging into Jazz’s user account, Prowl started going through what his pet had been doing these last few cycles while Prowl was at work. A lot of chatting with a librarian in Iacon. The same one every time, and about more than just what sort of books he was looking for right then… Prowl checked _find a second social acquaintance for Jazz_ off his to-do list, though he really would have prefered if Jazz had waited for Prowl to find him a local one. Online friendships were all well and good, but they didn’t help Prowl schedule a chaperone for Jazz on his free cycles.

Perusing the books Jazz was checking out, Prowl approved. Most of them were in line with Jazz’s desire to learn his instrument and change castes. This knowledge would serve him well. There were also several fiction stories, but though Prowl did not understand the appeal, he did not delete them. These were things Jazz did when Prowl wasn’t here. Just because he didn’t understand the appeal didn’t mean he objected. Jazz also had taken his instruction to research kinks on StoryDrive to spark; there were several books on interfacing and kinks in his history.

Closing StoryDrive he opened NetVid, finding more concerts like the first Prowl saw him watching, interspersed with the occasional action vid, and an instructional series on several different styles of dancing. Nothing unexpected there. Moving onto Excite, the basic internet access app, he opened the browser history to look through the sites Jazz had been visiting. Music again, including a borderline illegal series of instructional vids for his violino. They weren’t _outright_ illegal, but they cut into the profits of professional tutors and there were laws protecting their right to making an income. Most content hosting sites took such things down as soon as the moderators became aware of them. There was no reason for Prowl to intervene in this process.

Prowl opened Discourse to see who else Jazz had been talking to. Despite having access to it during the first and second shifts, Jazz hadn’t been using his onboard comsuite except to occasionally call his brother. Which meant he was talking to people using Discourse and Prowl wanted to know who.

He found that most of Jazz’s Discourse contacts were from his previous job, and conversation with them had tapered off slowly after Jazz had left. The only long, ongoing conversation Jazz was having over Discourse’s type-chat feature seemed to also be with his twin. Prowl read the most recent messages:

> _you shouldn’t let him push you around like that, TT._
> 
> _it’s better than the nicknames YOU give me bro. answering to Jazz is worth never being called two-twit again, RIKKY._
> 
> _shut up! you don’t know what youre tallkgin about_
> 
> _lol you just hate that im right for once._
> 
> _i suppose for as a thing its not bad. better than sexmoan or whatever other porntastic thing he couldve called you_
> 
> _lol yeah. believe me i was thinking that when he said he wanted to give me a pet name._

Prowl closed the app sharply. _He_ liked Jazz’s new chosen moniker. It fit him well, calling to mind someone who was spontaneous, adventurous, and fun, and described his passion for music well. And Prowl had _not_ been about to call his pet something “porntastic”. He had admired the strength and vulnerability of Two-Tone tied down with his own datacords, unable to so much as twitch else he cause himself both pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain that had become a single sensation. And yet where another might have just become exhausted and let Prowl do what he will out of an inability to fight back, Two-Tone’s passion had shone through. He had let — continued to let — Prowl do what he willed, true, and Prowl revelled in that control, but his strength had been undimmed. Prowl had imagined tying a lover like that many, many times, he’d even practiced with his own cords, and tied one or two mechs or femmes who had stayed a second night with him, but he had never felt so strongly about any lover. Two-Tone had needed a name that lived up to that moment, and he’d been trying to think of one that could embody that strength.

Then, more at Prowl’s mercy than any being had ever been before, Two-Tone had insisted on his own name.

 _Jazz_ was a very special name indeed.

Checking the rest of the programs for activity and finding nothing significant, Prowl set aside the tablet and retrieved a cube for himself. He wanted to wait up for Jazz, but he would not. This was Jazz’s free cycle. He didn’t need to cater to Prowl until tomorrow. Prowl laid down, let himself fall into powersave, but couldn’t fully initiate recharge.

He forced himself to lay still, optics shut off, while he waited.

Jazz let himself in, giggling and making too much noise to be stealthy, but obviously making an effort to be quiet, exactly four kliks before the beginning of the fourth shift. He paused in the washroom for a moment then came into the bedroom. He flopped face first on the bed next to Prowl.

He smelled like hot metal and ozone too. Sex.

Jealousy and possessiveness roared to the forefront of Prowl’s processor and he rolled on top of Jazz, who made a soft “omph” sound as Prowl used his full weight to press the smaller mech into the berth.

“Hi, Prowl,” he said, slightly slurring from the highgrade he’d consumed. He shivered and went limp. “That was fun but s’nice bein’ back. Missed you.”

Prowl only grunted, checking the locks for tampering. They were all there, intact and showed no signs of being picked.

Jazz groaned as he shivered again, the smell of sex joined by the sounds and feeling of arousal in his frame. “You gonna frag me?”

He shouldn’t. This was Jazz’s free cycle, and he’d just confirmed that Jazz couldn’t have networked with someone else while he was out. It was getting late. But he _wanted…_ wanted to do more than just _frag_ his pet. If Jazz was going to smell like _that_ (and how the _Pit_ did he get that scent all over him anyway!) then Prowl wanted it to be _his_ scent clinging to his pet’s armor. Wanted it to be _him_ making Jazz smell like that.

He shouldn’t. And he wasn’t going to. This was Jazz’s time off.

“No,” he answered. But he was going to look into options for chaining Jazz to the berth tomorrow.

“Fraggit!” Jazz arched against Prowl insistently. “Why not! I’ve been good. Didn’t even flirt but I’ve felt those Primusdamned locks movin’ against m’back ALL NIGHT. Been halfway t’overload and ain’t able t’do anything about it. I wanted you t’be home so y’could DO SOMETHING about it!”

Prowl froze. He shouldn’t… unless Jazz asked for it. _Asking_ was always a legitimate override to _should not_ situations, according to First Aid’s rules. As long as his prospective partner wasn’t so intoxicated he couldn’t consent. He ran through the indicators he had for judging someone too intoxicated for their requests to be considered valid: Jazz was awake, lucid. He was slurring, but speaking in complete sentences. But was his memory affected? Intoxication progressed quite differently in different mechanisms. Prowl toyed with the topmost lock, wishing he was already networked so that he would _know_ Jazz’s thoughts and physical state, and that he was offering a legitimate override to the rule that Jazz didn’t need to cater to Prowl on free cycles.

In lieu of that surety, Prowl could only trust what Jazz was saying. “Say…” say what though? What word could cover this? Safewords were to communicate comfort level, not desire. “Say you want me to.”

Jazz scratched against the bedding, writhing and starting to smell more and more like current arousal than past-sex. “Y’wanme t’beg? S’that it?” That hadn't been what Prowl had been asking for, but his fans clicked on at the thought. _His_ pet, _his_ toy, begging to be played with… “Please, Prowl. Please. I missed you. I want you. And I want you to frag me. _Please!”_

The first lock was already gone by the time Jazz had finished the second “please”. The panel beneath was straining against the latch so much that Prowl had to press it closed to get the latch open. Jazz howled when Prowl touched the port and he couldn’t wait any longer.

Prowl relished the slide of friction as his prongs fit snugly into their receptacles. No firewalls to break, Prowl was immediately drowned in Jazz’s _want._

Jazz’s mind was still in the memory of the nightclub’s pulsing beat, of throwing himself into the music. Bodies pressed around him, but he ignored them. They were a blur of sightsoundmoving objects and irrelevant. Just himself and the music. Moving.

Moving… moving… Jazz _relished_ the movement of the locks against his back, even if the cloak kept others from seeing them. They swung, they bounced, and with every twitch Jazz’s charge went higher and higher… music! Himself and the music and the charge.

A couple next to him in the press of bodies were entwined in each others’ cables and one of them screamed — drowned out completely by the music, wonderful glorious music — as she overloaded. The electricity washed over Jazz (that was where the scent had come from) and he wished Prowl was there — he wanted to dance _for_ Prowl — before the movement and press of the crowd moved them away.

It was too loud to talk, but Jazz was happier than he could remember feeling as he returned to Bluestreak and their cubes of highgrade. Bluestreak handed Jazz his drink and smiled, optics dark with overcharge and pleasure…

 _MINE!_ Prowl howled through their connection.

 _Yours!_ Jazz panted back, frame writhing beneath him. _Yoursyoursyoursyours…_ Sparks poured from his body. _“Yours!”_ he screamed as he overloaded.

Prowl let himself follow. _MINE!_ he said as he collapsed on top of Jazz and, since he did not want to hurt his pet, rolled to the side.

A moment later he gathered Jazz’s limp form into his arms. Jazz was dazed, halfway into recharge already. He smelled like sex again, but this time that only made Prowl hum in satisfied contentment.

 _‘Za goo way t’go t’sleep…_ Jazz slurred. _Ask you a’question?_

 _Yes,_ Prowl answered curtly, even as he petted Jazz’s plating gently. Jazz purred at the treatment, letting it soothe him. This was another of First Aid’s rules about sex: aftercare (and Prowl had been forced to do some of his own research to find out what that entailed) was mandatory. Though he still didn’t fully understand why First Aid had been so insistent; Prowl had come to not just appreciate the necessity of ensuring a partner (even — or maybe especially — his pet) recovered, but also appreciate it for his own sake. This part, the part where his partner(toy/pet) was sleepy and sated and still enjoying Prowl’s closeness — that was _important_ to him.

_C’n I’ve somethin’ other’an acidenergon tomorrow? Pleese?_

Prowl didn’t answer; he buried his consciousness in Jazz’s dreams and forced them both to recharge.

*

*

*

Jazz was, as was becoming his habit, awake when Prowl’s alarm went off. He was less aware than he usually was — still tired from his adventure last cycle — but he was waiting for Prowl to either wake him or send him back to sleep.

His pet had made a request last night. Prowl’s every thought rebelled against giving up enough control of Jazz to _ask_ what he wanted — especially not every cycle! Which Prowl likely would have to, since now that he was looking for it, riffling through Jazz’s memories of the last two kilocycles not just for physical condition or mental resilience or lack of resentment of Prowl and his situation, but for _preferences…_ he could clearly see that Jazz was sick of ascorbic acid flavored energon. Not because he didn’t like it, but because he wanted variation in what he was fed. He didn’t mind Prowl feeding him — enjoyed it — or Prowl deciding what to feed him. He just wanted Prowl to decide to feed him something different every so often.

Appalled that he’d neglected this aspect of his pet’s mental wellbeing, Prowl delved into Jazz’s memories for other flavors he’d enjoyed, looking for one he could feed Jazz. Immediately he was assaulted by hundreds of flavors. Good ones. Bad ones. Unidentifiable ones. Prowl shuddered. How could _anyone_ make a decision based on this?

_Make me a cube of whatever you’re having._

_You don’t tell me what to do,_ Prowl snapped back. _His_ pet. Pets should _obey._

Far from being afraid of the display of anger, Jazz hummed in contentment. _Certainly not. You’ll make what you want to make. I’ll just drink it._

Which was exactly what Prowl wanted to hear, but it didn’t help him make a decision. Prowl delved back into Jazz’s memories trying to find something suitable.

Absently he undid the rest of the locks over Jazz’s ports, though he left them latched closed. Jazz whined. He wasn’t sure which was worse: the stimulation from the locks or the charge-building knowledge that he could get his panels open if he could only figure out how to reach the latches. Prowl purred. Yesss… his pet was going to be needy and desperate when he got back, begging Prowl to take his pleasure… but there was still something off with Jazz.

_Where’s your collar?_

_Subspace,_ Jazz answered, intending to retrieve it. Prowl didn’t wait. He forced the subspace pocket open and discharged its contents. The collar’s cube-form bounced across the bed while Jazz hissed in fond annoyance. Then Prowl activated the restriction program, closing Jazz’s access to all his apps. There were only a few breems before the modified prisoner programming would shut down and allow Jazz access again, but it needed Prowl’s authorization code to get back on its time-based schedule.

But just what was he going to feed Jazz? he thought as he replaced the more decorative collar with Jazz’s heavier home one. This morning and from now on. He himself didn’t consume anything but midgrade with silver when at home or anywhere but the station. He didn’t understand how to choose amongst the variety of flavors Jazz’s processor offered.

He was angry, but he was unsure why he was angry. He wasn’t supposed to be capable of anger like this, this wasn’t any of his usual triggers… This was petty and personal and he did not understand it. He grabbed the cube Jazz left on the table last cycle. Jazz’s groan echoed through his mind, but so did his acquiescence. Prowl straddled Jazz’s legs and held him — and let Jazz cling to him — while he poured the cube down Jazz’s throat. Jazz mewed and accepted the pleasure Prowl gave him, relished it even, but now that he was looking for them, Prowl found the thought threads that were disappointed and irritated at being fed ascorbic acid _again._ Which tarnished Prowl’s own enjoyment of the activity. His control was _absolute;_ his pet’s enjoyment should also be _absolute._

He wondered if this was something that Jazz just needed training to overcome, like with the constant networking.

Reprogramming wasn’t even worth considering. Not only was it one of those things that First Aid had laid down as _absolute law, no Prowl don’t ever even_ **_consider_ ** _doing this, EVER,_ before he was even allowed to take a sexual partner, but he was perfectly aware of how ineffective it often was on such glitches. He’d just destroy the strength he so admired in Jazz, to no useful purpose.

Training… but he didn’t know how to train _this_ out of his pet. He’d have to step back, regain control of that strange anger, and come up with a training plan.

Jazz dozed through Prowl’s contemplations, already starting to drift back into recharge. Content and trusting that he was perfectly safe with Prowl.

Which was just another reason for Prowl to take himself and his temper away from where he could potentially lash out. That’s what his desk at work was for.

*

*

*

Prowl’s fingers curled around the edge of the desk. The weight and heft of it was so familiar that he could practically feel the almost imperceptible grain of the metal as he strained against it with all his strength. The release of the throw would be _so satisfying…_ He shouldn’t throw it. There was nothing wrong or illogical in the data he’d be scattering in the crash. He hadn’t even sat down at it properly. But he was still _angry_ and _frustrated_ at his miscalculation regarding Jazz’s energon and his inability to sort through all of Jazz’s inexplicably varied preferences to make a decision. It would _feel…_

**_CRASH!_ **

He’d been right. That did make him feel better. Prowl stood there, heaving in the wreckage, coolly watching flimsies flutter down around the room. His doorwings fluttered in satisfaction at the destruction he’d caused.

Around him, the other lab techs started peeking out from behind _their_ desks, checking to see if it was safe to emerge. Seeing Prowl observing the carnage with every indication of pleasure rather than glaring around the room looking for a new target, they slowly did so, though the bustle of resuming work was more subdued than usual. Prowl didn’t care.

Of course now he had to clean up the mess. That was the _rule._ Captain Brass was very adamant about that: if (and Prowl knew that the only reason this order was phrased as an if-then statement was because First Aid had insisted Prowl be allowed his chosen outlet for his temper) Prowl could not refrain from taking his temper out on the desk, then he would clean up each and every scrap of flimsy, every data disk, every tschochky that had been sent flying.  

His coworkers avoided him. Good. Prowl didn’t want to deal with them anyway. Sorting through his scripts for talking with them was exhausting on the best of cycles, and this obviously wasn’t going to be anything like one of his best cycles.

He snarled to himself when Barricade slipped out for lunch again, disgust that he might be cutting work to prey on young, inexperienced mechs  ~~like Jazz~~ again reigniting his rage. And closely following that was more rage at his own anger. What was _happening?_ Where was this _coming from?_

It was impossible that he’d caught a virus of some sort, but clearly something was wrong. He accessed the schedule remotely and set his status to _At The Medic._ As an (inexplicably sadistic) afterthought, he used a password he should not have had to change Barricade’s status to _On Break._ There was a 93% chance Barricade would forget to check and change his status when he got back, and be reprimanded for it.

*

*

*

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with you,” First Aid pronounced when he’d finished his medical scan and checked through Prowl’s code. “Beyond the usual. And even there I’m tempted to say there might be less wrong with you than there was at your last checkup.”

What?! How the _frag—_ “You must be mistaken. I am experiencing anomalous emotions at odds with my current software configuration.”

“You mean,” First Aid said wearily, “that you shouldn’t have the bandwidth to run emotional or social protocols because your tac systems eat up all your RAM.” Wasn’t that what he’d said? “The fact is that you’re getting getting some extra RAM from somewhere. From shutting down one of your _actually nonessential_ programs to recharge maybe. Your emotional algorithms are using the extra to run while you defrag. Your thoughts — mostly about whatever you’re dreaming about — are getting tagged with emotional markers and anything with one of those tags, or a thought closely enough related to share a few tags, are picking up those emotional tags too. You’ll be more volatile while it all sorts itself out, but I can’t think this is anything but an improvement to your overall health and mental state.”

He was shutting one of his programs down to defrag? How? Those programs had proved untouchable, whatever First Aid said about them being _nonessential_. And because he was experiencing emotions normally while he dreamed, those emotions were becoming entwined in his waking thoughts, jumping from one thought to another by association with whatever the subject of his dream had been?

Prowl did not like it.

True, he had often wished he was not so much an outsider, that he could share the innate understanding of others’ actions most mechs did. Wished he did not need a script to carry a basic conversation. But this wasn’t what he’d had in mind. He was feeling disgust and rage and he _didn’t know why._ “How do I stop it?”

“No,” said First Aid. “We are not stopping this unless it becomes a danger to your physical well being.”

“I am experiencing rage I do not know the cause of,” Prowl did not disagree with the medic’s verdict. He was supposed to agree with whatever First Aid said after all. “That is not common behavior, for myself _or_ for someone who experiences emotions normally.” Fear gripped him. That wasn’t _safe_ for  ~~Jazz~~ anyone. Prowl knew what was said about him: it was only a matter of time before his lack of caring or empathy led to him becoming one of the criminals they tracked. Prowl had always made it a point to control himself, channel his pleasures and his rages, so that would not happen. But these new emotions were _not_ under his control.

“Which is why I said you’d be more volatile than usual while this sorts itself out into whatever your new emotional status quo is,” First Aid admonished gently. “Emotional control isn’t easy for a new-built mech to learn. I can’t imagine it’ll be easy for you. You’re responding to your new emotions with rage because you don’t understand them.” He smiled. “Take a moment. Count to ten. Try and pinpoint what you’re really feeling and why. Think about what a measured response might look like.”

Simple enough instructions, though Prowl suspected they would be much more difficult in implementation.

“And,” First Aid continued lightly, “if none of that helps diffuse the anger you’re feeling, throw your desk against the wall until you’re calm enough to think it through again. Call it a pressure valve.”

All-in-all Prowl’s visit to the medic was less than satisfactory, though it wasn’t a total loss. He knew what was wrong with him, and that the medic didn’t consider anything to _be_ wrong. Prowl was left going over and over his nightly logs, trying to figure out which of his tactical programs was shutting down of its own accord to free up processing power for emotions. None of them showed any signs of ceasing activity, or of tampering. Which made even less sense than the medical diagnosis did.

Between the mess he had made during first shift, and visiting the medic just after second started, there was no way Prowl would get any actual work done before third started. He was tempted to stay and do something useful with his cycle, but responsibility stopped him. Jazz was waiting, and if that thought brought him no pleasure for the first time since he’d purchased the mech, he still could not ignore him. He needed to _feed_ him at least.

That thought still made Prowl unreasonably angry. He was tempted to throw his desk again, but he needed to go through First Aid’s steps first.

Take a moment. Count to ten.

One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six… Seven… Eight… Nine… Ten…

Next: try to identify what he was feeling and why.

He _liked_ feeding Jazz.

It was, in many ways, the ultimate expression of control. Not just the ability to choose to do so (or not, though the thought of not doing so brought Prowl no pleasure) but the act of it. Jazz was helpless, completely dependant on him, and Prowl made that helplessness a pleasure for the smaller mech.

But Jazz’s pleasure had been tarnished by Prowl’s mismanagement of the flavors.

That thought… it was still petty and personal and Prowl recognized the anger as being at himself rather than at his pet. He’d forgotten the cardinal rule of dealing with normal mechs: Prowl was not normal. His wants, his desires, and especially the fact that he actively resisted drinking anything but his usual. He _should_ have been using the last two kilocycles experimenting with different substances. Learning his pet’s preferences. Drawing up a suitable feeding schedule. Instead he had harmed his pet’s mental state and enjoyment of Prowl’s control and was stuck in a quagmire of decision paralysis over something that should have been a simple matter of scheduling.

So that was what and why. Next was to try and think of a measured response.

Obviously the proper thing to do would be to go home and start the experimentation process. His thought about training Jazz out of this had been misguided, the result of misdirected anger. This situation was not Jazz’s fault; it was not for him to modify his behavior. But _what should he feed Jazz?_

Glaring at the desktop, he set his tactical systems to the question.

In rapid succession he researched, analysed and evaluated hundreds of different recipes for nutritional content, regional preferences, ease of fabrication, and his best guess of how Jazz would like the resulting meal. His best guesses were slag without being able to check his results against Jazz’s memories, but he couldn’t go back without making a decision first. One his pet _liked._

He soon found that there were as many different recipes as there were stars. Enough to lock up even his massive computational abilities, leaving Prowl back at square one.

He was evaluating the appropriateness of throwing his desk again — should he go through First Aid’s steps again, or had his previous attempt been enough to justify desk throwing? — when his comsuite pinged.

He looked at the message. It was from Jazz.

For a moment of (impossible) panic he thought that he’d lost track of time (also impossible) and Jazz was messaging him because his lateness had caused him to believe something was wrong and he’d needed to safeword to get access to his communications. But no, a quick check was enough to assure Prowl that his timing was still as good as ever. Jazz still had two breems before the restriction programming activated. Prowl, if he left soon, would be there in time. Further, after checking this message’s origin IP address, he realized Jazz had used the tablet to send it.

Curiously he analysed the message, scanning it for viruses. Finding it clean, he opened it.

Inside there was no text, but there was a single, simple app titled _What to feed Jazz_. It was rough and unpolished, obviously constructed using a commonly used custom app creator that could be downloaded from the internet. Just copy the desired programming into the app creator and it spit out a fully functional app. Prowl set his tactical computer to debugging — and fixing several errors in — the small program, then opened it.

It turned out to be a random generator. Clicking its single button generated three different fuel dishes from a much longer list:

> _Crunchy Magnesium Cookies_
> 
> _Frozen Cadmium-infused Energon_
> 
> _Midgrade with Bismuth_

Prowl’s anger and frustration disappeared as though they had never been. Jazz wasn’t trying to take the decision from him — _mine_ — but had narrowed the list of possibilities down to something Prowl could easily evaluate and come to a decision on. Both the cookies and the frozen treats required extensive preparation. Perhaps another cycle he would set aside the time and materials to make such things, but this cycle he did not have the time. But he had midgrade, and while bismuth was a rarer additive and as such not included in sampler packs like the one he had given Jazz that first cycle, it would be easy enough to buy a small jar of it on the way home.

His pet deserved a _reward_ for that. His research prior to Jazz’s arrival on pet-training had indicated that special treats or toys were suitable rewards for a pet. Prowl wasn’t ready to delve back into the inexplicably complicated realm of choosing a properly rewarding food-item, but toys Prowl could certainly do.

Which meant he had to hurry, if he was going to stop at his favorite interfacing boutique and still make it home before Jazz’s restriction programming activated.

Unexpectedly, picking out a toy proved harder than he’d thought it would be. Rewards should be something the pet enjoyed, something they could play with even when the owner wasn’t present. What did Jazz like about interfacing? Everything, because Prowl made sure he enjoyed everything. He controlled every aspect of every sexual encounter, ensuring that his pet’s physical pleasure surpassed his own. But on his own, when Prowl wasn’t using everything he knew about the frame and mind to drive his pet to helpless ecstasy, what did Jazz like?

He did like being fragged, as proven by his solicitation of such — twice! — during his free time. He liked the pain of being penetrated by Prowl’s prongs, but Prowl didn’t know if that was because he liked a little bit of pain mixed into his interfacing or because he liked Prowl’s unusual datacords specifically. Either way, Prowl was not going to trust that sort of dangerous electric play to any system but his own, so any sort of electrical stimulation device was not an option.

Jazz liked being petted.

Hoping for inspiration, he went through several downloadable books of porn offered by the boutique. He didn’t like the stories, but searching for the word “petting” told him it was highly associated with a specific kind of play. Jazz wasn’t a cybercat or turbodog, and Prowl had no idea if he had ever fantasized about being one, but Prowl purchased the costume toys anyway. If his pet liked these, Prowl could purchase other, related, toys in the same theme.

As he went to check out with his purchases, Prowl caught sight of a display of collars and accessories. The same model of collar Prowl had purchased vorn ago and which Jazz now wore was the central piece of the display. However, instead of being displayed by itself as it had been then, now several styles of leashes and chains were attached, fanning out from the central loop like the evolving sea of possibilities of a tactical plan. For each one, Prowl generated a scenario… Jazz following docilely on Prowl’s heels… Jazz tied down… Jazz chained to the berth so that he would always be _right where he belonged._ Yesss… Prowl set his tactical systems to evaluating the different options for the two most arousing scenarios. The aesthetics of control was Prowl’s priority for anything Jazz wore while in Prowl’s presence, but safety and relative freedom were priorities for anything Prowl left active while he was gone.

With his tactical systems’ report, he picked out the two leashes he wanted and continued to checkout.

*

*

*

Jazz was… not worried, exactly. Or nervous. Or pensive. Or any related word, but he was something. He didn’t know how his help would be received. Bluestreak’s description of Prowl with a temper was still hard for Jazz to apply to the mech, but offended was easier for Jazz to imagine. When he’d made his sleepy, half dreaming, request for ascorbic acid he hadn’t realized how much of Prowl’s mental state depended on _knowing_ what to feed Jazz, and being sure Jazz would enjoy it. He hadn’t expected Prowl’s frustration or decision paralysis this morning when the mech had sifted through Jazz’s memories for other energon flavors to feed him.

Honestly, if Jazz had expected anything at all, it was either to be told no, Prowl would _not_ change what he fed his pet, or for Prowl to just give him an occasional cube of what Prowl himself drank. Which Jazz had never tasted, but knew wasn’t sour. Prowl had completely blindsided him with his reaction.

He _wasn’t_ surprised by Prowl’s reaction to the perceived attack on his control when Jazz had suggested something. He was _Prowl’s._ Prowl was completely and utterly _in control,_ in all things. Right. No making suggestions or trying to control Prowl’s decisions.

Acquiescing to simply being fed ascorbic acid again hadn’t actually helped. Now Prowl was _looking_ for his feelings on the flavor of energon and not just whether he enjoyed the experience overall and Jazz’s exposed dissatisfaction had only made Prowl more frustrated.

But he’d still wanted to help. He needed some way to suggest a variation without actually making suggestions.

In the end he’d gotten his idea from a web-based random recipe picker. He’d thought how, if he actually took the thing’s suggestions, he would have all the variation he could possibly stand, and yet have handed his fate entirely over to this program to make decisions. Absolute ceding of control. Orion had helped him find books to help with the basic programming; Ricochet helped him find the app creator (though Jazz hadn’t told his twin just what he intended to create or why). Jazz had decided for his randomizer to spit out three options, so that it was still Prowl’s decision what to feed Jazz, but no matter what he chose, it would be something he liked.

Now he just didn’t know if his help had been appreciated.

He refused to work himself into a state over it. Really he did. Pacing around the apartment plucking scales on his violino (He could pluck scales! Woot!) wasn’t just an excuse to pace. He really needed the practice.

He did notice when Prowl officially became “late” getting home, because his HUD, already stripped down to the bare struts of available programs, blanked entirely when the restriction programming kicked in, but Jazz didn’t let that interrupt his practice. He’d found that many — most even — musicians “cheated” by having the sheet music, or instructions, or demonstrative videos, displayed on their HUD so they could see and reference it during their performances. It was, in some circles, regarded as an essential trick for succeeding. But even without the restrictive programming, Jazz didn’t have that luxury. Orion had said he could find copies of those apps archived, but Jazz wouldn’t be allowed to install them. He could take notes using his basic HUD stickies app, but he had to learn his music and how to play it without the references other musicians took for granted.

So Jazz didn’t let the restrictive programming interrupt his practice.

Only Prowl’s actual return did that.

Jazz brought the scales he was practicing to an end and made a flourished bow as though he were ending a performance already. He looked up and saw that Prowl was just staring at him. That should have unnerved him, but he’d gotten used to it. Prowl had kept the tick of staring for exactly three kliks then looking away for only a few cycles after bringing Jazz home. Then, all the staring.

He smiled. He was not nervous. He was… not going to show he was nervous. Nope. “Where do you want me, Prowl?”

Small talk was also a thing Jazz had learned to function without. Prowl wanted one thing from Jazz, and Jazz’s entire reason for being here was to give it. Why did he have to bother with small talk? Answer: he didn’t.

And Prowl certainly didn’t now: “Bed.”

Already shivering in anticipation, Jazz went. He crawled on top of the white sheets and, after a klik’s thought, took Prowl’s favorite position: kowtowing with his legs spread wide for balance and just managed to clasp his hands behind his back, which wasn’t easy without Prowl pinning or tying his hands. He could just barely touch the clasp on his lowest panel with his pinky while he did this, but couldn’t get any sort of grip. He’d tried, before, though he didn’t try now. His arms pushed his doorwings up and out, straining them. This hadn’t been comfortable two kilocycles ago; now even the discomforts were comfortable. His panels attempted to open on their own, straining against the latches, but remained securely locked.

Prowl didn’t immediately follow, which made those not-nervous fluctuations in his tanks flutter anew, but it also made his armor plating stand on end with static charge. His fans clicked on, and he didn’t even care that he was such a… a _pet_ as to be this desperate for his owner’s touch, cables, data, without any effort on Prowl’s part.

What was keeping Prowl? Jazz strained to hear what might be going on in the rest of the apartment over the sound of his own fans. He was in the kitchen area… Jazz was only mostly sure. He shivered in anticipation, his fans starting to whine. He was aroused, and still nervous which was only feeding his arousal.

Despite listening for his approach, Prowl’s first touch still made Jazz twitch in surprise. He ran his hand over Jazz’s back like he was a zap pony being checked for race qualifications.

“Please,” Jazz panted.

Please what, he wasn’t sure. _Frag him,_ obviously, but that was only part of Jazz’s state. He needed to know how his amateurish little app, his attempt to help, had been received. Was he going to be rewarded with a new flavor, or punished for his presumption?

Several of the books he’d borrowed on StoryDrive had talked about “punishing” misbehaving submissives, and even though he _knew_ Prowl wasn’t like that — there was nothing playful or rewarding about challenging his control — his fans strained more, spilling heat into the air.

“Please,” he panted, begged, again.

Prowl seemed disinclined to answer.

Instead Jazz felt his cables spill out over his back. Four of them slithered down to bind his wrists which made Jazz gasp, while the fifth slithered to Jazz’s topmost port, which Prowl delicately unlocked so that it could rear back and stab forward, impaling itself in Jazz’s port.

It wasn’t like being stabbed by the prongs elsewhere. There was a sharp pain only at the suddenness of the friction, then the prongs slid into their receptors, tight and _perfect._ No invasiveness, no sense that anything was anywhere but where it was supposed to be. Jazz felt pinned to the berth by that one point as the feelers extended into Jazz’s circuits, then Prowl’s personality fell against his and unable to hold it back anymore, Jazz screamed as he overloaded.

The storm faded as Prowl was sliding onto the bed with Jazz, lifting him up to wrap his legs around Jazz’s waist, then guiding him back down to lay close and intimate across his chest. Prowl petted his helm and Jazz onlined his visor to look up into pleasure-darkened optics.

_I like you desperate for me. A pet should live to please his master. A toy should anticipate being used._

_I definitely enjoy you using me. Do I please you?_

_More than I ever could have imagined._

_Me too,_ Jazz answered, meaning more than just enjoying being Prowl’s fragtoy, but everything about being _Prowl’s._

Bound with his hands behind his back, doorwings uncomfortably pushed up out of the way, Jazz relaxed against Prowl, enjoying the petting.

Enjoying it so much, he didn’t even mind it when Prowl simply turned off his optical band. He hadn’t thought Prowl was done with him; if nothing else Prowl still hadn’t fed him tonight. This morning’s difficulties might have been put behind them, but Jazz didn’t expect Prowl to pass up the opportunity to hold him down, or something else that made Jazz feel wonderfully helpless, and demonstrate his control over Jazz’s fuel intake.

Prowl hummed in agreement, smoothing his hands over Jazz’s armor. Yes, he had a plan.

Jazz was looking forward to it.

He did notice — and mind! — when Prowl found his medical access commands and triggered the release for his helm and cranial casing. _Argon! Prowl!_

Prowl stopped, gently pushing the Jazz’s components back in place, where they attached automatically. _What part of this do you object to, pet?_

 _I ain’t too keen on you taking me apart._ He was also, suddenly, keenly aware that Prowl had given him the safeword, and abided by it when Jazz had used it, stopping. And that not every mech who could have potentially bought Jazz would have. He would have been knocked out on a medic’s operating table and woken up in whatever shape his owner desired. Suddenly Jazz felt completely, utterly vulnerable to Prowl’s mercy, and yet… with Prowl that was okay, because Prowl wanted control, not to take his pleasure careless of what damage he could do to his pet.

 _I won’t take anything (too beautiful to take anything). I’m adding some things, and you’ll enjoy them._ He petted Jazz’s frame until he saw his pet’s thoughts relax. _Safeword?_

 _Neon._ Jazz was still uncomfortable with Prowl taking him apart, even if only for a breem, but Prowl’s assurance had piqued his curiosity. Prowl never did anything Jazz didn’t enjoy, so if he thought Jazz would enjoy the results of being taken apart and put back together, Jazz was willing to try.

Prowl triggered the command again. Jazz’s helm released with a soft hiss and Prowl lifted it away. Optical band, HUD, and audios went with it, leaving Jazz utterly blind and deaf. He felt Prowl stroke over the lower half of his face, then up to where his optical band sat, smoothing the connections between his facial platelets and the smooth metal of the cranial casing itself. Jazz shivered. This was… indescribably weird.

Prowl found another medical command and the cranium itself split open to reveal Jazz’s processors. If Prowl touched the circuits and microchips, Jazz couldn’t tell, but he was on the edge of panicking and calling the all stop safeword when Prowl’s teeth gently closed around Jazz’s throat cables, above the collar.

Immediately and inexplicably, Jazz relaxed. Prowl was in control. Prowl wouldn’t hurt him.

_Better._

_What are we doing, Prowl?_ Jazz asked the only way he could with Prowl’s teeth pressing against the side of his vocoder.

_Installing a relay. There’s a port on your processor that was used to stress test it during manufacture. After it’s installed in your frame, it’s inaccessible except by taking off much of your head. But there are certain toys, ones that add things to the frame, that make use of it with a relay to those other appendages._

_Appendages._

_You’ll see._ Prowl gave a little shake with his teeth, and Jazz went limp and dizzy and contented.

_‘Kay._

Jazz felt floaty as Prowl continued to probe around inside his head, looking for the installation point for the relay. So floaty he didn’t even move when Prowl closed everything up and put his helm back in place. Jazz didn’t bother trying to reboot his audios and optics — Prowl would do that for him, when he was supposed to have them back, and Jazz was happy with that thought.

 _Feels heavy,_ he muttered, moving his head back and forth. He couldn’t really _feel_ what Prowl had done, but he could feel something there. It was like having a rock wedged in his tires. There were no sensors to touch or feel pain, but somehow he could very much feel it was there. Interesting…

Prowl stopped the movement by grabbing Jazz’s chin. Claws scraped gently against the cables of his throat in threat/reassurance. _Hold still._

Jazz went limp.

Prowl riffled through his thoughts and Jazz felt his pleasure at finding his pet so contented as he fussed with something around Jazz’s audial horns. They were still off, so Jazz couldn’t hear anything, but he felt the soft pings of magnets attaching to his plating.

Satisfied, Prowl turned his attention to points further down Jazz’s frame. Used to letting Prowl move him, he didn’t so much as twitch when they changed positions.

No longer leaning against Prowl, Jazz’s position was again what it’d been when Prowl had walked in. Prowl though, was now kneeling between Jazz’s feet, pushing his hip plating against his pet’s aft, stroking over his back, over the panels. Jazz tried again to open them, but they were still locked closed. Static jumped from Jazz to Prowl’s fingers eagerly.

_You gonna frag me?_

_Yes,_ Prowl answered simply; last night being the only night when he’d ever answered no and Jazz still didn’t know what that had been about. Maybe Prowl really did like hearing him beg. _I have more pieces to add first._ The prehensile datacords binding Jazz’s hands shifted, unlooping and relooping so that they still bound one, while Prowl held the other with his hands. _You will like them._

Jazz shivered when Prowl twisted his hand. That was becoming painful, but he trusted Prowl wouldn’t hurt him.

Another medical override and the armor all along Jazz’s hand and forearm popped open and peeled away. Prowl didn’t take it fully away like he had his helm, but he pulled it back to get at the components beneath. He laid whatever it was against the struts, clamped it down, and clipped it to his wires. Jazz felt more of that than he had the installation in his processor, and when Prowl closed his armor back over it he felt the heavy, invasive tightness of something being pressed between his struts and armor that wasn’t supposed to be there.

_Safeword?_

_Neon._ It was more noticeably uncomfortable than his helm once all the pieces had been put back, but now he was even more curious what this was about.

Prowl doing the same to the other hand wasn’t any less uncomfortable, but it moved him closer to being finished. Jazz relished the slide of the datacords over his wrists, rebinding them. His hands and forearms felt strange, but they felt _claimed,_ inside and out. Jazz shivered again, more sparks leaping from him to Prowl. He was _owned,_ he was _Prowl’s,_ _inside_ and out. There wasn’t a single part of him, mind or body that Prowl could not simply reach out and take. Jazz panted. It was heady, electric. How could he ever protest that?

Prowl paused to pet and rub over Jazz’s plating, revving him up and calming him down at the same time. So much petting preceding (during?) interfacing was unusual, but Jazz was enjoying it so much. He didn’t know what permutation of Prowl’s kinks had brought this on, but he was relishing the attention. Prowl’s satisfaction seeped past his firewalls and Jazz purred.

Petting turned into laying magnetic strips on the plating around his panels and then petting each one until they were smooth. They felt weird, but didn’t dull Prowl’s touch. Jazz tried to imagine what he was doing and what the final result could possibly be. He couldn’t.

One more medical command and armor all along his lower back popped and peeled away just like his hands, including the armored cover over his lowest port, which Prowl must have unlatched at some point while petting him and Jazz hadn’t noticed.

Prowl pressed on the port and Jazz tried to arch as he howled. After so much gentle, steady stimulation that built charge almost entirely on the _anticipation_ of being fragged, that almost painful pressure was nearly enough to send him over the edge. As it was, Jazz collapsed just shy of it, lightning dancing over his plating in bright arcs, writhing and completely uncaring that Prowl was doing something invasive to his internals.

A plug snicked into his port, and Jazz hissed because that was the still-tender, mostly unused one thanks to Prowl only having five datacords. He braced — as though he could ever brace for such a thing — for the rush of data from Prowl’s mind, but there was nothing. Just cold, inert prongs sitting inside him.

Prowl closed up his armor around the port and over the new thing. Experimentally Jazz wiggled as Prowl’s hand passed close to the thing, pressing it and wiggling it around. Electricity crackled over his plating, but Prowl slaved Jazz’s processor and interrupted the overload. Jazz continued his explorations of the thing. It was neither tight nor loose. It didn't wiggle, but Jazz could get it to move back and forth slightly, its sharp prongs scraping gently against his receptors. He panted, and Prowl interrupted another overload.

_Please… please, Prowl. Come on, I don’t know what you did, but this thing is driving me crazy. Please just frag me!_

_I’m not done,_ he answered mercilessly and Jazz whined, high and desperate.

Jazz tried to follow what Prowl was doing. Now he was mucking around in his programming again, installing something, editing the restrictive programs, and doing… something to smooth out the code. It felt like an eternity before Prowl was satisfied with the state of Jazz’s processor.

_I’m turning them on._

_Turning what—?_ Jazz started to ask before he was forced to arch in Prowl’s grip, writhing as all the new parts Prowl had installed sent out feelers, digging and wiggling through his internals until they met and intertwined and connected. Jazz screamed, and not entirely in pleasure as he was _invaded_ by the things Prowl had installed in him.

Then the relay hummed to life and the program Prowl had installed initiated the new pathways, integrating the sensory data and granting Jazz control of his new parts. New emotive gestures became available and began integrating with his defaults. New vocal patterns were installed and when the program prompted whether he wanted to retain access to his default vocalizations as well, Prowl selected _yes_ for him.

When it was all done and Jazz lay in an exhausted heap — Prowl had let him tip sideways; how weird — overloading was the furthest thing from his mind. He just wanted to lay there and ache. Prowl rebooted his optics and audios, releasing his hands to let Jazz curl up in a foetal position. He laid down behind Jazz and petted him comfortingly. Absently Jazz flexed his claws, kneading the blanket in growing contentment. He could still feel the invasive feelers everything had sent out, but his systems were working to integrate the new parts. The programming Prowl had installed for them was forcing his systems to normalize. Right now everything still felt weird, and he ached from the final step of installation, but in about a kilocycle he’d be completely fine.

And Prowl had promised he’d like them. Jazz couldn’t reject them, at least not until he knew just what Prowl had done to him.

He touched Prowl’s leg, enjoying how Prowl was just holding him close, and wrapped his… _something_ around the larger mech to hold him in return. Ooooh… that felt good. He could feel the touch, but it also felt like data exchange, and renewed static started crawling over his plating and circuits.

Then he freaked out. What the _frag_ was -- he yowled, then flinched at the loud, completely unlike him, sound. His… _somethings_ folded down and the _other something_ did _something else,_ hitting Prowl’s plating.

 _It’s a tail,_ Prowl informed him.

An image appeared on his HUD. Himself, after the installation had let him go limp but before he’d tipped over. The data cords from Prowl’s wrist were still wrapped around Jazz’s hands, while one snuck up Jazz’s back to claim its usual spot in his topmost port. Jazz’s claws still flexed, even though his ears and tail lay peacefully at rest. The latches holding all of Jazz’s ports closed, save the one Prowl was using and the one now occupied by the tail, were clearly visible, but a strip of Jazz’s back a little wider than his panels had been covered in short polyester fur.

_For petting._

Petting?

Prowl ran his fingers down Jazz’s back, through the short fur, and Jazz’s new sensory programs turned that simple touch into pure, undiluted _pleasure._ He arched into the touch, tail swishing against Prowl’s leg and itself feeling _so good_ it nearly whited out his optic band. Automatically, Jazz dug his claws into the blankets again, kneading rhythmically — the same rhythm that he was now purring. Different than any engine-purr he’d made before, this was deeper and oscillated in volume by some rhythm Jazz didn’t understand. Yet.

That was better than sex!

… _I take it back,_ Jazz sent weakly two breems later, sleepy and sated and smelling of hot metal and ozone, while Prowl’s smugness still pressed down on him. He felt like he didn’t even have the energy to wiggle — physically or mentally.

Prowl petted Jazz’s ears — which, _purr!_ — and soothed Jazz nearly to recharge, then reached past Jazz to the table. Jazz powered on his visor to look at the cube. If Prowl had been trying to distract him from another ascorbic acid flavored cube… it was working. Jazz was too hungry to care what he was fed.

“Open,” Prowl ordered and sleepily Jazz did.

Pleasant surprise bubbled through him at the taste of bismuth, gritty and crunchy despite being dissolved in energon. Yessss… everything was okay. Everything was really, really okay.

Especially if Prowl kept petting him.

*

*

*

Jazz was pretty sure he had come out of recharge already begging Prowl to frag him. He felt like maybe he should have been embarrassed about that, but he was just too sated to care. Too sated to even twitch as Prowl carefully fed him a cube of manganese phosphate laced energon.

He woke fully to find himself kneading the blankets again, and making that strange, altered purring sound. He’d purred before, with his engine — a continuous thrum of his engine, like idling in traffic. His new ears — the mobile triangular dish shaped attachments around his actual audial horns — honed in on the sound, moving in some way Jazz could see had been added to his reactions but didn’t fully understand yet, tilting to catch a nearby echo Jazz wouldn’t have been able to hear before. This purr was both deeper and softer, and oscillated between 21.98 Hz and 23.24 Hz, changing with his ventilations though there was absolutely no reason for his engine sounds to be matched to his vent cycles like that.

It was pleasant, he supposed, and obviously meant to express contentment given how he kept making it when he was contented.

Jazz wondered again what had brought this on. It seemed so different from Prowl’s usual control kink of tying him up in very restrictive, aesthetically pleasing ways. Maybe this was just for those off-nights, when Prowl decided to forgo pulling out Jazz’s cords and turn him into a living canvas, an artistic work entirely dedicated to showing off his control.

Whatever had triggered this, Jazz decided his new attachments were weird, but generally pleasant. He was — his tail swished, dragging against the bedsheets — gah! — _very_ happy with them.

His tail swished again. Electricity, data, sensation, flowed into the port. His purring stopped as he cried out, engine whining. He wiggled his aft. He could feel the prongs inside him, the feelers the new appendage had sent up his spine. He reached back to tug and push at the toy but it refused to budge, refused to provide any sort of stimulation besides the _pleasure_ shooting through his systems. Charge crackled over his frame at the sensation. His other ports tried to open, but were securely latched closed.

 _Primus…_ He knew what this was about now. He knew why Prowl had done this. This was about begging. This was about him coming home from the nightclub so revved up and needy he’d actually _begged_ Prowl to frag him. Prowl had decided he liked that and was torturing Jazz to get a repeat performance.

Jazz didn’t care.

He flipped himself over on his back and started wiggling into the bed.

 _That_ felt good. His charge climbed delightfully higher. The pressure didn’t push the prongs further into his lowermost port, or move them, but it made them easier to _feel._ The latches on his port covers caught and dragged on the sheets. The movement ruffled his new fur delightfully and his tail swished against the bed.

He rubbed and rubbed, but while his charge climbed, it refused to become enough to overload, or for the breakers to trip. Jazz yowled — a sound that he’d never heard himself or another Cybertronian make before — in frustration. Then he let out a loud, higher pitched, vibrating purr. _Frag me!_

But there was no one there to do so.

Ricochet called. Jazz heard the ping from both the tablet and his onboard comsuite. Too busy trying to get _anything even resembling friction Primusdamnit!_ on any of his ports to bother with the computer, he answered using his comsuite.

“Hey,” he panted.

“Hey bro,” Ricochet paused as Jazz let out a soft moan. Oh _Primus._ Even the _ears_ were sensitive, the sound of _Ricochet’s voice_ (ew ew ew) sending waves of pleasure down his neural net. “You okay?” he asked.

Jazz whined. “Yeah…” he panted. “I’m just…” trying to rub myself to overload and it’s not working! He moaned again.

“Yeah, I can hear you just.” Jazz heard Ricochet wince as Jazz let out a yowl. “So ah… I’mnotlisteningtothis. Gladyou’reokayI’mhangingupnow. Bye.”

Jazz didn’t even care. He’d tumbled off the bed to the floor and found that while the smooth white tile didn’t offer a single lick of friction, he could press himself up against the side of the bed and press just a _little_ harder against the prongs in his port.

He finally crawled back onto the bed, still so very revved up — he hadn’t been able to get even a decent buildup of charge, nothing that came even close to tripping his breakers — but he was too exhausted to keep trying. He was determined to ignore his arousal and _rest;_ a resolution completely overridden when his tail swished, sending static skittering through his systems again. With a growl Jazz was once again on his back trying to get himself off.

Bluestreak tried calling. Jazz didn’t answer. He just sent his friend a _bsy rbbng sx t_ text as soon as his comsuite stopped pinging. It had to be somewhere during second shift though, if Bluestreak was awake and wanting to talk.

The only relevance _that_ had was that Prowl got off work after second shift, and he’d be home sometime after that.

Jazz whined.

*

*

*

Prowl wasn’t sure he saw the appeal of this… _pet play_ sort of fantasy for himself. Jazz had been free and wanton, rubbing up against Prowl for his own pleasure, rather than beautiful and strong tied up in Prowl’s full control. But as a _reward_ for his pet, Prowl had made the right choice. Prowl was pleased his pet had liked his reward. The cybercat costume had certainly been the right idea. Jazz liked being petted, and had liked it even more after the additions had been fully installed. The fur and other pieces were designed to enhance the pleasure of being touched, after all.

They’d have to be accounted for when Prowl next tied him. That tail did not seem fully under Jazz’s control, and Prowl would have to ensure that no ropes squished against the new ear attachments. And of course Jazz’s _hands…_ Prowl couldn’t help a rev as he imagined the challenge and reward to tying someone with claws.

But that was a fantasy for another cycle. His tac systems didn’t seem to agree though, and three times Prowl had to save planning files for different ways to tie up his pet and firmly close them down so that he could concentrate on… what was he supposed to be doing?

Ballistics reports. Right.

It seemed that Prowl happy made the other techs just as, if not more, nervous than Prowl inexplicably raging. These reports had been in his inbox when he walked in, but it seemed no one dared to come close enough to give him more work to do.

Except Barricade.

The larger black and white mech, a tactical model Prowl knew was based on his own prototype framework, slid into the chair opposite Prowl at the desk. “Thinking about your little slut at home?”

Prowl’s claws dug into the desk. Anger clawed at his spark. Possessiveness and a black rage sent his doorwings up in a threat display Prowl had never made before. He did not like Barricade even noticing _his pet_ but to have the unmitigated _gall_ to talk about Jazz — beautiful, strong, utterly _Prowl’s_ Jazz — like that turned Prowl’s possessiveness and desire to rip Barricade to pieces into a truly monstrous hunger.

“No,” he bit out.

First Aid’s rules. He had to remember First Aid’s rules. Stop. Take a moment. Count to ten.

One… Two… Three… Four…

“Really,” drawled Barricade. “Then why have you been staring at the same page of that report for two breems? Of course if _I_ had those sweet little ports—”

Barricade didn’t get to finish because the desk between them went flying. And if Barricade happened to be in the way and got viciously clipped by one errant corner… Well. Prowl could argue it was an accident, at least.

*

*

*

First Aid had confirmed — again, in Captain Brass’ office — that Prowl was allowed, by order of the department’s primary medic, to take his temper out on his desk and scoffed that Barricade shouldn't have been standing so close to it with Prowl obviously in a temper.

Prowl said it had been an accident, the unfortunate result of Barricade being too close when he had finally lost his temper. Both _could_ be true. Prowl had certainly intended to finish going through First Aid’s emotional control steps before resorting to desk throwing, which meant that throwing the desk was probably not intentional, thus an accident. And Barricade’s proximity had been, in fact, extremely unfortunate for multiple reasons. Unfortunate + accident. Nope. He certainly hadn’t purposefully hit his partner with the desk. Not at all.

Prowl had never been able to tell a decent falsehood in the past. Lying successfully required active social programming, the lack of which was part of Prowl’s personality disorder. He was quite adept at spotting others’ lies, however. Being unaffected by the feigned indicators of honesty and sincerity meant he could very easily see the indicators of falsehood.

This time, somehow, he had gotten the lie — no, not a lie; a specific interpretation of what had happened — past Brass’ own impressive ability to detect falsehoods. But the Captain still slapped another reprimand in Prowl’s file with a lecture and a reminder that if _Barricade_ resigned as Prowl’s partner he was going to be sent to a mnemosurgeon for reconditioning.

Prowl _hated_ reconditioning. It had failed to fix him in the past, and Prowl kept a secret back up drive just in case. But there was, he was quite certain, no more unpleasant an experience than someone forcibly ripping his personality apart and putting it back the way _they_ thought it should be.

For the first time though, he wondered just what Barricade had done to be assigned to the forensics lab and as Prowl’s partner. Barricade was a tactical model, supposedly one of the successful ones. Yet he was assigned nowhere near the department’s tactical unit. Prowl had requested forensics, since he had known that with his defects he would not be employed in tactical, but Barricade had been assigned there. In the “aft’s end of police work” as he had put it, on more than one occasion.

What threat, Prowl wondered, was Barricade under, _not_ to just resign as his partner and send the older mech off to reconditioning? That would make Barricade happy, Prowl was sure of it (and maybe there was something to be said for these emotions after all, if this was the first time he was realizing that), and yet he didn’t exercise that option. He needled and teased Prowl instead.

Released from the Captain’s office, Prowl cleaned up the mess he had made and put the disastrous first shift out of his mind.

This time he managed to concentrate on the ballistics reports, and on fluid splatter after that. Then he was called to a crime scene for shrapnel scatter analysis.

The random generator, which Prowl clicked just as he was preparing to leave, gave him three more possibilities for Jazz’s feeding:

> _Unprocessed copper ore dissolved in energon (any grade but low)_
> 
> _Silicon wafers with gelled highgrade frosting_
> 
> _Chromatic slushy_

So Prowl picked up a package of the indicated wafers on the way home.

He was looking forward to seeing his pet as he stepped inside. Even if his tactical systems were almost done designing a (beautiful) system of restraints to tie his pet into, he was more interested in just seeing Jazz. Laying with him. Seeing/feeling/hearing for himself that his pet was happy and content and safe while he leisurely fed him the wafers he’d just bought.

In the bedroom, Jazz let out a loud, entirely sexual moan.

Possessiveness and jealousy and _murderous intent_ roared through his mind. Who would _dare—_

No one apparently. Jazz was alone, wiggling obscenely on his back, making loud insistent purring sounds. The hardlight chain Prowl had installed looped from the headboard where he’d put the holoprojector to the ring on Jazz’s collar where he’d installed the endpoint. It was long enough to let Jazz off the bed and pace around it a bit, but Jazz wasn’t straining against it. He was trying to rub himself off on the sheets. His optic band was dark and he didn’t seem to have noticed Prowl there.

 _“Pro~owl!”_ He moaned, and Prowl’s wrist-cover flicked open on it’s own accord, the prehensile and mobile cords within already reaching towards the delightful sight on the bed.

Prowl caressed Jazz’s nearest foot with his datacords. Electricity jumped between them, setting fire to Prowl’s systems. He dimly heard the suddenly too-loud droning of his own fans. His pet was already _so close…_

 _“Pro~ooowl!”_ Jazz moaned again, ending in a strange, desperately demanding yowl.

The larger mech moved as though in a trance to sit on the bed next to his pet, datacords twining around him gently. Jazz continued writhing, completely blind to Prowl’s presence. Even when Prowl leaned forward and put his hands on Jazz’s chest, rubbed over sensitive gaps in the armor, the electricity that crawled beneath and lit him from within jumping from him to set Prowl’s sensornet aflame, Jazz showed no signs of cognizance as he arched desperately into the touch with a high pitched, demanding purr.

“Prowl… “ Jazz panted. “Please… Please, oh Primus! I don’t know how much more of this… _Prowl!”_

“I’m here,” Prowl said soothingly, pleasure igniting at the sound of Jazz begging for him. He marvelled that Jazz had endured this for two shifts, hadn’t used the safeword that would turn everything off, just because he thought Prowl had wanted him to. This… had not been an intended or anticipated result of Jazz’s new appendages, but Prowl found he liked it very, very much. “I’m going to take care of you.”

Jazz yowled again, trailing off into a sob. “Please, please,” finally he noticed he wasn’t alone, that Prowl was there and he flipped over and wrapped his arms around Prowl’s waist, exposing his back to Prowl’s hands and cords, “pleasepleaseplease just let me… I need you. I need to overload… Prowl, _please!”_

“Yes,” Prowl said with relish, “you do.”

Jazz howled as Prowl ran his hands over his ears, then down his back and through his fur. Electricity arced over him, grounding in Prowl, who hissed in his own pleasure at the unintended assault. He felt Jazz’s claws digging into his back. Once Prowl would have reacted to that as an assault on his ports, but he knew that wasn’t the case. Nor did he care any longer, not with Jazz.

With no more foreplay than that, Prowl started unlatching Jazz’s straining port covers. Jazz sobbed in relief as they finally were allowed to open. They practically glowed with the heat and energy being put out by Jazz’s arousal and Prowl hissed again as he slid the his first plug into its customary place.

Jazz’s pleasure and need washed over him, pulling at Prowl’s firewalls. Prowl withstood the assault, but barely. Pleasure clawed at him, dragging at him, and Prowl followed it into his pet’s mind. The pleasure and relief at the unending torment finally being brought to an end… it pulled them both over the edge and they overloaded together.

*

*

*

Prowl stroked Jazz as the still offline mech recovered and absently patted out a stray fire that smoldered on the sheets. He’d come back online after only a few kliks offline and an extremely long reboot cycle. It was taking much longer for Jazz to come back online. That was only to be expected; Jazz had been in that state for two shifts — for _Prowl_ — after all, while Prowl had only come in at the end. And what an end. Prowl had never experienced being overwhelmed by a partner. He’d thought it impossible, due to the sheer processing power of his tac systems. Nor had he believed himself to be missing anything. Being overwhelmed was not, after all, being in control.

He moved the hardlight chain to get at another fire, careful not to shift the sleeping mech on his lap.

He couldn’t regret this, though. Jazz was so completely and utterly _Prowl’s_ that he didn’t feel the outrage, the defensiveness, the crawling violation he felt when his personality was pushed aside to let the mnemosurgeon work.

Jazz was… precious.

Prowl shouldn’t be able to value another like that. Evaluate usefulness, anticipate future need, factor in replaceability, and assign mathematical worth… Prowl could certainly do that. His tac systems ensured it. But those same tactical systems squeezed out his ability to truly, honestly _value_ another person. If this was, like his inexplicable rages, a result of Prowl’s emotional programming finding the RAM to run, if only in a limited capacity while he defragged, then Prowl could see why First Aid had refused to stop the process.

Coming back online after that, booting up slowly, with Jazz’s pleasure still crawling through every circuit, Prowl had finally managed to pinpoint just where his emotions were finding the available RAM: Jazz’s systems. He was using Jazz’s processor to run the programs that couldn’t fit in his own.

Which meant those dreams Prowl was running his emotional programming during, and from which the emotional tags were proliferating out to the rest of his thoughts… they were most likely dreams of Jazz. Or Jazz’s dreams. Or both. Which explained why, looking back, Prowl’s spikes of inexplicable emotion had all been related in some way to Jazz.

First Aid, Prowl suspected, would not be happy to find he was using Jazz in this way, as though he were just equipment. He’d worry for Jazz’s safety, his well being.

He didn’t need to. Jazz was precious, and Prowl would protect him utterly with his life.


	3. Act Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... all those nasty tags up there that I blamed on Barricade? Consider those the main warnings for this chapter. That means TRIGGER WARNINGS for stalking, violent rape fantasies, and attempted rape.

Jazz… adapted. After a kilocycle he could even sit up and concentrate on the violino, ignoring the arousing stimulation from the costume. Of course, it was about then that he finally noticed Prowl had started chaining him to the berth.

It was a good length of chain, really. Jazz still had almost the entire bedroom to roam. He only _just_ couldn’t reach the berthroom door. And Prowl had made sure that all of Jazz’s various activities were within easy reach. Even the things under the bed, Jazz could get to easily. Given the lack of furniture in Prowl’s apartment, he wasn’t exactly missing much in the way of places to sit or sights to see. He could still practice, read, do all the things. He’d even found a new appreciation for the sunny patch on the floor next to the bed nearest the window. And every one or two cycles Prowl clipped a shorter leash to his collar and led him to the shower where _Prowl_ scrubbed him clean (What was with that? Care was not Prowl’s kink!), then draped him gently over his lap to feed him.

It was Prowl. Prowl had a control fetish. Jazz had heard the possessive thought of _keeping Pet right where he’s_ **_supposed_ ** _to be_ more than once. The sight of the chain, or Jazz docilely accepting the shorter leash to be led around, never failed to make Prowl rumble approvingly. Which in turn made Jazz’s struts turn to jelly as his thoughts went floaty and weird.

Jazz was still chained to the berth. It annoyed him as much as it turned him on.

Other parts of the cybercat costume proved easier to adapt to than the tail. ALL of it was wired directly into the pleasure centers of Jazz’s neural net, but they did other things too. The tail affected Jazz’s balance, making it possible to for him to balance on the bedpost (which in turn had allowed him to reach the hanging overhead light and hang from it. Fun!). The claws mostly just shredded the sheets when Jazz got excited, but also allowed for greater delicacy while plucking the violino’s strings. The ears increased sound pickup, amplifying quiet sounds and increasing the range of pitches he could hear, which meant he knew the instant the violino started going out of tune.

Oh, and the purr. Purring was great. He seemed to have been programmed with a different purr for every conceivable situation. Pleasure and contentment were the big ones, of course, but there was a louder, higher pitched one that Jazz let out when he needed to be fragged. And another he made exclusively when he was hungry. Another, discontented, one just for “pet me”. These weren’t demands, or requests, so they seemed to slide right under Prowl’s sensitivity to such things… and he gave Jazz what he wanted. Purring was the best.

He also developed the music purr.

He’d been having issues advancing to more complicated scales and exercises because of the lack of a metronome. Metronome apps were one of those things musicians seemed to download and keep on their HUDs as a matter of course, but ( _of course!_ ) Jazz couldn’t. He wasn’t allowed to put things on his hard drive. He could (and did) download one of the suggested free metronome apps to the tablet, but if he left the computer sitting too long, the screensaver switched on and the metronome turned off. But he found that when he was concentrating, and calm, and losing himself to the music, he’d start purring with egressive and ingressive phases of exactly eight nanokliks each — the same length of time between the clicks of a standard metronome!

Since Jazz really had no conscious control of his purring, it did mean that frustration over a mistake could bring a whole practice session to a halt. So he had to work extra hard at being able to set difficulties aside and just continue.

Practicing (after getting up early and taking a shower _by himself_ for the first time in almost two kilocycles) was what he was doing when Bluestreak buzzed for entry. Second free cycle. Escaping the apartment for a couple of shifts! Cheerfully Jazz flung his waiting shawl over his shoulders and went to answer the door. The chastity locks Prowl had put back on for Jazz’s cycle out bounced in a way that made him shiver, but compared to the stimulation from the tail they were minor and easily ignored.

“Hi Bluestreak!”

Bluestreak smiled his nice smile. “Hi Jazz. Can I see?”

He meant the kitty appendages, among other things. He’d heard ALL about the new additions to Jazz’s frame. With a grin Jazz dropped the shawl to let his friend take a look. Prowl hadn’t changed his colors yet. He was still the same matte black Two-Tone had been all his life; _Jazz_ thought he might like a change, but so far Prowl hadn’t agreed. He liked the black. Gold accessories, like Jazz’s collar and wrist cuffs, stood out, while black ones, like the locks and Jazz’s fur, were more subtle. (Maybe Jazz could at least argue for a more _interesting_ black, something less purely functional for blending in with the stage equipment.)

The tail swished out from behind him and his ears flicked. And if that hadn’t been enough, Prowl had decided he really liked opening Jazz up and adding things. Two cycles ago, Prowl had put little decorative gold electric… zappers on and in Jazz’s doorwings that forced him to hold them at a single, very specific angle (unless he was kowtowing, or Prowl physically moved them) or be shocked. They were turned off right now, for his free cycle, which was a relief. And he had strips of (beautifully etched) black armor grade metal that wrapped around the largest transformation seams in his legs, the filigree weaving in and out of the armor, and were ultimately bolted down to keep anyone from removing them. They completely inhibited transformation, restricting him to a single function — sex.

About the only thing Prowl hadn’t done that didn’t need an expensive medical procedure to undo was open up the armor above Jazz’s spark and bolt it that way. Honestly Jazz didn’t quite know how to feel about that. He couldn’t sparkshare, Prowl wasn’t interested in sparksharing, there was no reason to do that to him… but there were times Jazz almost wanted him to anyway.

All in all, it hardly mattered that Prowl had told him to wear the ornamental collar instead of his heavy one; Jazz _really_ looked like a sex toy now. Everyone could tell what he was currently configured for and it was genuinely difficult to tell he’d ever had any other function. Bluestreak let out an impressed rev of his engine.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re still happy with all this?”

The bolts holding his transformation seams closed still ached, and it was more of a relief than he was going to admit to to be able to move his doorwings without being shocked (even if he _liked_ the shocks in certain situations where moving them was inevitable), but… “Yeah. I’m still happy.” Even so, sweeping his shawl off the floor and over his shoulders to hide the majority of the mods from easy view settled him a bit. “So what’s on the agenda for the next two shifts?”

“Well if you still want to go out… “ Bluestreak paused to let Jazz answer.

“And I do.” His tail kept twitching, moving on its own accord to wave back and forth below the hem of the shawl, and there was no way to hide his ears or the transformation inhibitors. Jazz either had to resign himself to being seen and recognized as someone’s fragtoy, or spend the next fifty vorn locked in Prowl’s apartment entirely. Jazz decided he’d rather take his chances outside. “I ain’t giving up the chance for some real sun.”

Bluestreak smiled. “Then I was thinking about visiting an outdoor street market. There’s energon venders there, so we can eat, window shop, imagine what we would do if we could buy all the things, and watch the crowds. Then I was originally thinking about going back to the nightclub, but in light of… “ he stopped awkwardly.

“The fact that I look like a sex toy,” Jazz filled in. “And as tempting as it is, if anyone grabs me, Prowl will tie them up with their own cords and plug them into an industrial power generator. Then he’ll never let me out of the apartment again.”

“Yeah. That.”

Jazz laughed. Prowl was… Prowl.

“In light of that,” Bluestreak braved on, “I think another venue would be more appropriate for third shift.”

Grinning, Jazz gestured for the enforcer to lead on. “Hopefully it’s not too far to walk.”

*

*

*

Prowl was, if nothing else, predictable. He let his pet out once every two kilocycles, on the same cycle. He’d been watching for them. Barricade trailed Jazz and the little slut’s chaperone at a distance. They chose to walk (who did that?) which made following them without being seen more difficult. Still, they hadn’t seen him by the time they got to the market, by which point the crowds of other mechs walking, talking and shopping did their part to hide Barricade from his quarry.

The slut was Prowl’s weak point. Barricade was sure of that. He wasn’t sure how or why a mere sexual plaything could get past his “partner’s” iron walls of logic and emotionlessness. It didn’t matter. Jazz had done so, and Barricade was programmed to attack the enemy’s weakest point. _He_ was one of the _successful_ models. Prowl was just a prototype. _Trash_ they couldn’t justify throwing out. Barricade should never have been assigned to working with him. It was demeaning. Degrading!

But he’d been warned that there was no place for him in the police department after this. If Barricade couldn’t keep _Prowl_ as a partner, that self-righteous aft Brass would personally gut his tactical systems and send him, giftwrapped in a shipping crate, to the manager at the waste management plant. So if Barricade was going to get rid of Prowl for good, it had to be a result of the _glitch_ going off the deep end, not something that could be blamed on Barricade.

So far, any attempts to goad Prowl into turning that impressive temper on Barricade had been met with failure. Teasing and needling were ineffective at getting him to react. Unless Barricade was needling him about his little slut… _that_ netted Barricade some impressive reactions. But Prowl had been becoming more volatile than usual recently, and was being given official leeway for it. Unfortunately he stuck to taking his temper out on his desk, scaring the other techs and interrupting work, but otherwise causing no harm. The other techs, always only a step from turning on Prowl, were ready to outright mutiny, but Brass wasn’t budging. The one time Barricade had managed to goad Prowl into actually attacking him, the mech had managed to argue it was an accident (which, given Prowl’s track record with lies, meant it probably had been, Primusdamnit) and gotten off with a reprimand.

Which left Barricade thinking about _other_ ways to get Prowl removed from the department, and hopefully decommissioned entirely.

At least the slut was pretty enough to look at, he thought, watching the matte black mech in the optic-catching maroon cloak flit from one stall to another, chattering cheerfully with his chaperone. Barricade would have liked to be able to rescue him, _ruin_ him for that self-righteous piece of garbage that had bought him, but the toy was perfectly happy being a toy. Barricade couldn’t rescue someone who didn’t want to be rescued.

For a moment though, he imagined what that might have been like. He usually made sure his partners enjoyed the interface somewhat, giving them just enough pleasure so they wouldn’t call rape afterwards, but he wasn’t sure he cared enough in Jazz’s case. He wanted to hold him down, listen to his screams as he broke his firewalls, relish in his crying… all while Prowl watched, preferably.

The pair stopped at a stall selling trinkets and Jazz picked one up, holding it aloft to show the chaperone. The grey beat cop waggled his doors in approval.

Barricade let the crowd bring him closer; close enough to see everything Prowl had done to his little toy. The light hit that ridiculous cloak just right for him to see for a moment what was hidden beneath… Barricade’s cables twitched in their casing on his left wrist. He’d already seen the collar and the slave-cuffs. He’d had visions of ripping those away (ripping the slut’s armor in the process), of crushing that ridiculous gold collar around his throat, ruining and defiling Prowl’s marks of ownership. Now… he heated up at the thought of ripping away those ridiculous little locks — or better yet, ripping out the entire panels. Fragtoy didn’t need those anyway.

Breaking those transformation inhibitors (breaking struts)... clawing away those ridiculous helm and spine extensions… listening to the little toy scream as Barricade branded him, replaced Prowl’s marks with his own…

Too bad he really did look happy with Prowl. If he hadn’t been, if Barricade could have rescued him… then he’d be a hero. The trash would be thrown out, reconditioned or decommissioned, and Barricade could take the little slut for his own (for a kilocycle or so, until he got bored with him, anyway). Maybe give Prowl a video of himself defiling the slut before they shut off his processor and snuffed his spark. But he couldn’t afford to make a false accusation of abuse.

Now there was an idea. _Barricade_ couldn’t afford to make a false accusation…

*

*

*

Jazz wasn’t trying to spend all of Prowl’s money. The stipends he got for his time out weren’t part of his payment; they were for energon, or cover fees, not for Jazz to hoard and buy things for himself with. Prowl might not notice, or care, about the difference, but Jazz did, and he wasn’t trying to take advantage of Prowl’s generosity. (An ironic thought, given their respective positions in this arrangement, but true.)

Still, he hadn’t been able to resist buying a few trinkets at the market. Things he’d liked, but also things he hoped Prowl would like.

Just the thought gave him nervous tank-flutters. Primus, he hoped Prowl would like them.

They’d had energon — wonderful frozen chromatic slushies so hand-forged the chromium still had traces of its ore elements — as the market was closing.

Right now though, he was wondering where Bluestreak was taking him. A poetry reading, he’d said, but they weren’t headed to the concert hall; instead they were creeping through some of the harder, dirtier parts of Praxus. Rust ran down the walls and Jazz swore he was hearing turborats fighting over scraps just out of sight. Bluestreak seemed to know where he was going though.

Finally he stopped at a door with a broken, unlit neon sign proclaiming it was “Off-Beat’s Diner”. It didn’t look like a diner, but Bluestreak keyed open the door confidently.

Inside it was very dark, even compared to outside, where the sun had gone down about a joor after third shift had started.

“Passes,” a huge mech demanded as he loomed out of the shadows next to the store.

Bluestreak offered his forearm to be examined under a blacklight for something. Jazz saw an otherwise invisible mark glowing briefly before the bouncer released him. A pass. Then the unnamed mech turned to Jazz.

“I don’t have a pass,” he admitted, ears twitching nervously over his sensor horns.

“He’s with me,” Bluestreak assured the bouncer. “We’re just here to listen.”

“I’ll get him a pass.”

Jazz imagined what Prowl’s reaction would be to finding out Jazz had a — unfamiliar, probably illegal — symbol etched into his plating and winced. His tail lashed back and forth, the fur puffed in panic and he felt his ears go back against his helm as his claws extended. He took a step back. “I, ah, really can’t do that. I’ll just leave, okay, no foul. I never saw this place…”

Bluestreak touched his hand and Jazz nearly swiped at him before he regained control of himself. His friend wasn’t looking at him though, but the bouncer. “He’s a good person, Behemoth, but he’ll get in trouble if he has a pass. He won’t come in here without me or another member, I promise.”

“Better not,” Behemoth rumbled.

“Won’t!” Jazz grinned winningly as they passed, forcing his ears back up cockily, even though he couldn’t get the fur on his tail to smooth back down.

There was a same-level section straight ahead from the door, but Bluestreak led him down a staircase to the side that looked like it might spend most of its time hidden beneath a trapdoor.

Another door opened at the bottom. A mech’s voice rang out: “…and the rain becomes a song of praise… drip… drop… plink… plonk.”

A klik of silence, then another mech — it was still too dark to see details clearly, but he had all the markers of an average Praxan — spoke out as Bluestreak led them around the edge of the room looking for an open place to sit. “As an example of prose describing nature, it’s not bad, but we aren’t here to simply reiterate what everyone already knows. Acid dissolves metal and then deposits it in caverns to make stalagmites and stalactites. Big whoop!”

“The point,” another, third mech — a Predacon with wide shoulders and a fin on his head — spoke up, “is that he’s expressing what inspires him. Not all of us are inspired by blunt speeches about injustice. The fact that a factory worker has to come _here_ to tell us about the beauty of rain _is_ the injustice.”

“I liked it,” said another, who Jazz couldn’t see.

“You like everything,” someone scoffed.

“And what’s wrong with liking everything?”

“The POINT,” the Predacon reiterated, overriding the well-worn bickering, “is that creative expression belongs to everyone, whatever form it takes. It is the right of everyone, regardless of caste. It shouldn’t matter if you were designed to be a poet,” he gestured to a lithe frame lurking in the back, “or a factory worker,” to the aspiring poet, “or… a sex worker.”

And Jazz found himself briefly the center of attention, a sea of mostly red or yellow optics examining the newcomer in their midst, from his fuzzy ears to the transformation inhibitors on his legs. Jazz froze, ears going back and pulling the shawl tighter around himself, until Bluestreak pulled him down next to him at the table he’d found.

Everyone looked back to the Predacon when he continued. “Therefore it is not for us to critique the legitimacy in expressing beauty for beauty’s sake. Only ideas and technique. So if anyone has anything _useful_ to give our poet, please do so. Otherwise we have more prose to hear from other artists before fourth shift.”

“The use of onomatopoeias was interesting,” a helicopter wedged behind a table with three others said after a short pause.

“Like sound poetry,” several mechs groaned.

“Shut up,” he said cheerfully. “Sound poetry’s awesome and you all are just stupid for thinking otherwise. AND,” he boisterously overrode more protests, “I’d like to see more exploration of that idea.”

A much longer pause, and the aspiring poet sat and another — the Praxan who’d scorned the first poem for being about nature — stood at his table.

“Speaking of blunt speeches about injustice,” the mech — another standard-looking Praxan — at the table nearest Jazz and Bluestreak muttered quietly.

Bluestreak snorted. “Stay here. I’m going to get us some energon.”

“I can pay, this ti—” Jazz started, but Bluestreak was already too far away to hear without Jazz speaking up and causing a disruption.

“In our chains we sleep! Comfortable and blind!” The new poet almost yelled. Several mechs grumbled in discontent. “While discord gathers in the air...Clouds gather. Lightning waits, held back by complacency...While stormclouds sit on the horizon...that no one will see...The call to action comes...First we tip the scale, then they tip it back...The escalation never ends! And we give in when we should take! Wake up Brothers. And embrace the coming storm.”

“Well,” someone said once the ringing in Jazz’s audios had died down. “On a purely technical note, you used ‘gather’ twice fairly close together. I would suggest finding a different word for one or both of them.”

“Why?” asked another. “It’s purely a word salad, flung together with the hope of finding something profound — and inflammatory — in random metaphors strung together, well, randomly. At that point what’s the purpose of correcting his grammar?”

“Because everyone has a right to a fair critique.”

“How’s this for fair: the line _we give in when we should take_ isn’t about advocating any sort of pursuit of justice, only striking back at a perceived enemy. Violence isn’t the Decepticon way, but I could see how someone could advocate it as a last resort. You aren’t suggesting a last resort though, but a preemptive strike.”

“The movement is already _illegal._ That would hardly make it a _preemptive_ strike…”

The argument devolved from there.

Now that he wasn’t being looked at, Jazz let himself relax into the almost rhythmic back and forth of the critiques.

“Not that I’m complaining, Blue,” he asked, quietly so as not to interrupt, when his friend came back, “but why’d you bring me here?”

Bluestreak put a cube down in front of Jazz. “Careful, I haven’t tasted that yet, and the fare here is a bit… random.” He sat down in his own chair and sipped his drink. “Hmm… not bad tonight.”

Jazz took a taste of his. He couldn’t identify a single intended flavor, just a mishmash of various  competing ones that somehow blended together into something unidentifiable, beyond bitter-sour. It wasn’t bad.

“As for why here?” Bluestreak continued. “You want to learn songwriting. I don’t know anything about songwriting or how to get in touch with a songwriter willing to teach you — especially given your lack of availability. But I figure it might be a bit like poetry, and these are all amateurs, so they might talk to you after the reading breaks up, give you pointers.” He smiled. “Stress test your attempts, when you get to the point of trying to write your own things. And no one will bother or touch you here.”

Jazz felt his frame heat up with gratitude. “Thanks.” He poked the energon, debating another sip. “And what _is_ this?”

“They call it Gunk. It’s the leftovers from a few different restaurants around here. Instead of outright throwing it out like they’re supposed to, they bring it here. The result is always interesting, but it’s free.”

The same Predacon with the wide shoulders and fin on his head eventually broke up the debate, with a firm admonition that the Decepticon Movement was one of peaceful resistance against the status quo, not a call to arms. Then he ceded the floor to another poet, this time one of the helicopters. “Time passes, night blooms… Stars guide us through the night and cold… And dawn shines on a new Cybertron.”

“I like it,” the same mech from before piped up immediately, speaking over the inevitable _You like everything._ “It’s got a good sense of time passing, and it’s a good metaphor for inevitability that things will get better.”

“You should turn it into a ballad.”

“No! You should _not_ turn it into a ballad,” the person at the next table said loudly. “As a three-line piece, and within the context of our movement, it’s very oblique but makes sense. But it will just get silly if you try to make it any longer.”

“But—!”

Later, as the reading started breaking up, the Predacon who’d been moderating slid into the booth across from Jazz. “I apologize for singling you out earlier. I didn’t realize you’d be self conscious about it.”

What was Jazz supposed to say? He looked frantically for Bluestreak, who’d said he needed to wash out their cubes before they left. His ears flattened. “I’m… not. I mean I shouldn’t be. It’s okay though.”

“Bluestreak seems like a good friend. It must have been expensive for him to buy the entire night from your procurer so you could come.”

 _Could_ Jazz’s ears go any flatter? “I’m not actually… I’m a technician-frame. This is a temporary thing I’m doing, I’m not for sale, and it’s my usual night off.”

“Temporary?” The mech settled in. “Hopefully it really is and you move onto better things afterwards, but interfacing for money is hard work to get enough shanix to leave behind.”

“Strictly temporary,” Jazz assured as his ears relaxed. “We’ve got a contract.”

“And after?”

“Caste change. Gonna be a performer.”

The mech smiled, wide and full of teeth. It was actually a nice smile, but the mech had way too many teeth. “ _Good_ for you. Bucking the system, I like it. Though the fact that you had to resort to this, whatever this really is, to do it is an injustice.”

Jazz hadn’t really thought of it that way. He’d decided what he wanted, decided what he was willing to do to get it, and lucked out to get bought by Prowl. “Suppose so. Money’s money though. Can’t just make it appear in your account for nothing.”

“Don’t,” Bluestreak said emphatically as he returned, though he didn’t try and get the big Predacon to move so he could retake his seat, “get Skybyte started on his issues with the banking system. We’ll be here all night, and you have a curfew.”

“Yeah,” Jazz agreed. “Nice talking to you though. See you around.”

“Good bye, and good luck with your endeavor.”

All in all, Jazz was ready to call it a pretty good cycle off. Now he really did want to get back to Prowl.

*

*

*

Skybyte watched the two of them go until another mech slid into the booth next to him to talk. This one was a solidly built Praxan painted in Enforcer colors. Other mechs — ones who weren’t Predacons, or fully military frames — would probably think the mech was large, but Skybyte was more potentially worried about the Enforcer markings than his size.

But Bluestreak was an Enforcer too. A desire to see justice done did not disappear just because the mech was one of those built to enforce laws. Since becoming the moderator for this branch of the Movement, Skybyte had actually found that a surprising number of Enforcers were frustrated with the inherent injustices of certain laws. The newcomer had to have a mark, or come in with someone who did, to get past Behemoth at the door, so Skybyte was willing to give him a chance.

“Hello.” As was the rule, he didn’t offer or ask for a name. Giving out their names — the ability to be identified — was a risk each mech had to assume for themselves.

“Sweet isn’t he?” The newcomer nodded at the just-departed pair. “Seems perfectly happy with his situation don’t he? But I met Two-Tone before Prowl changed his name to Jazz, and he was a shy little wall-crystal. Now he’s parading in that get-up with barely a care. Pretty big shift for less than six kilocycles.”

It was; and, given what Skybyte knew about how easy and common it was to take advantage of mechs in the sex-work industry, slightly suspicious as well, if he was that new to it. “Are you implying something?”

Like illegal reprogramming.

Why had the mech, Jazz, been so nervous about his modifications? Was it possible he hadn’t been completely willing to take them on? If that was the case, why wouldn’t he say something to his friend, Bluestreak? Though his nervousness and self consciousness about his current function ran a bit counter to this mech’s implication that Jazz’s personality had been modified. Of course he’d heard that, except with the most extensive of reprogramming, there were always throwbacks to the original personality, cracks in the new one, especially with frame language. Those ears. They weren’t part of Jazz’s original frame, and he doubted many would be able to read how they betrayed emotions, but Skybyte was a Predacon. He knew feline frame language. Jazz’s immediate insistence that he was fine with his situation would be easier for a programmer to code into him than changing the “random” twitching of his ears.

“I don’t know,” the mech said. “Probably not. Just concerned is all.”

Still, this mech, whoever he was and whatever his relationship to the situation, probably had reason to be concerned. If he thought something was going on, then the police should investigate it. It wasn’t fair that vulnerable mechs were ignored by the system when they were raped, reprogrammed or killed, but it was a reality. Still, attempting to start a legal investigation should be the first step. “As you should be. I urge you to take your suspicions to your coworkers. They should investigate.”

“Can’t,” the mech hung his head morosely, “Jazz’s… _owner,”_ Skybyte felt several of his fins twitch at the word, “Prowl and I have history. I make a fuss and everyone’ll just assume I’m making trouble.”

“That shouldn’t matter in the face of carrying out justice.”

“No, it really shouldn’t.”

“Are you sure there isn’t anything you can do?” Jazz, or Two-Tone if that was really his designation, didn’t deserve this. What could they do if this mech couldn’t go to the police? Skybyte didn’t have the criminal contacts, or the resources, to kidnap someone and deprogram him.

“No.” The mech looked down at the table sadly. “Nothing _I_ can do.”

After the mech left, Skybyte did not immediately go out and file a police report. He was worried, but he also was a stranger to the situation. He’d do a little bit of poking around himself before acting on another mech’s suspicions (no matter how suspicious Jazz’s own behavior now seemed to him).

He started with the only other mech at Off-Beat’s who’d spoken with Jazz tonight.

What he found out from Behemoth wasn’t encouraging.

The bouncer dealt with enough Predacons to recognize the fur on the tail standing on end like Jazz’s had as a fear response. Given that the Decepticon Movement was illegal, Skybyte could understand someone being afraid to sport their symbol, even invisibly. That was why the pass to Off-Beat’s secret basement wasn’t actually a Decepticon symbol. (Anyone trying to forge a pass by putting the Decepticon symbol on their arm was going to get a nasty surprise, but so far it hadn’t happened.) But the Decepticons weren’t the only places that used UV etched passes. Many nightclubs, arcades, theme parks, gardens, events such as conventions or shows, and even museums used UV etchings to denote mechs who had free access or could bypass lines.

Above and beyond Jazz’s “owner” — and Skybyte’s fins still twitched at the word, even in his own thoughts — clearly forbidding him from modifying his own frame, even in minor, invisible ways, the restriction itself barred Jazz from access to any number of activities, most of which were perfectly legal. Possessive and controlling. Nasty combination in a sexual partner, especially for someone providing the service for pay.

Those had been an awful lot locks and control devices Jazz had been wearing. Skybyte had only seen one of the ones on his back because the shawl had shifted as Jazz got up to walk away, and Jazz had quickly covered it again. Skybyte didn’t know what else that shawl hid, but what he had seen was bad enough.

Still… there was nothing Skybyte could do until the beginning of the first shift, when the station opened to the public. He should do his best to find out as much as he could about Prowl in the meantime. Before he did anything drastic. It was still possible he was misreading things.

*

*

*

Jazz tossed the shawl in the hamper and switched out his free cycle collar for his real one in the washrack. Briefly he looked in the mirror and batted at the dangling crystal he’d gotten and hung from the central loop. A clear spear of quartz, set in gold, Jazz hadn’t been able to resist the addition. He hoped Prowl liked it.

Prowl wrapped his arms around Jazz and pulled him close as soon as Jazz climbed into bed. Not the jealous pounce this time, so something about coming home from the nightclub had set him off. He didn’t know what, but since he wasn’t planning on going back to them it wasn’t a worry.

“You gonna frag me?” Jazz asked sleepily. The poetry readings may not have involved physically exhausting himself on the dancefloor, but had been tiring in their own way. He shut off his visor.

“No,” Prowl said calmly. “Not unless you ask.”

Interesting. Not what he’d expected really.

“Always want to frag you,” Jazz said, snuggling into Prowl’s plating as he pet the black fur attached to Jazz’s armor and toyed with one of the locks. “But if it’s alright, I’d like to sleep instead. Got a trinket. You like?”

Clawed fingers gripped Jazz’s chin to tilt his head up so Prowl could see the new crystal dangling from his collar. Jazz didn’t bother turning on his optical band; he just let Prowl move him and examine his neck. Maybe Prowl would bite him there, shake him a bit; Jazz liked that, and the limp, floaty feeling would be a good one to go to sleep to.

“I do like your trinket. It’s a good choice.” Prowl’s voice was soft velvet in the darkness. Velvet over steel. Soft chains… briefly he wondered what the poets tonight would think of Jazz’s train of thought now, then shook it away. This, this moment, was between him and Prowl.

“S’good,” Jazz slurred a bit as he started falling asleep. “If y’ain’t gonna frag, y’gonna plug?”

“What do you want?” Jazz had to already be dreaming. He was sure of it. Prowl didn’t ask what he wanted. Ever.

“S’good. Sleep better.”

He was asleep before the prongs snicked home.

*

*

*

Everything was back to normal by the time Prowl left for work. The strangeness of the moment last night was even more dreamlike and unreal in the morning light, and Jazz shook it away.

Prowl fed him — midgrade with silver — and, after, closed his teeth around Jazz’s throat and shook gently. Jazz was woozy and limp while Prowl roughly removed the locks and fingered his ports to overload then cuddled him back to recharge. Jazz woke when he tried to turn over in his sleep and got a shock to his doors because the movement had pushed them out of the proper angle. He groaned and firmly settled himself on his stomach to sleep. He pushed the loops of hardlight chain out of the way and devoted himself to a truly lazy cycle.

He didn’t feel like practicing or reading, so as soon as he’d assured Ricochet that _Yes, he was fine, just sleepy_ and indulged his brother in some conversation before _he_ had to go to work, Jazz went back to his nap.

He started in the bed, then a joor later moved to the floor when the sunny patch formed at its usual time. His tail twitched in contentment, though he was too close to full recharge to purr.

His ears twitched to pick up the arrival of hushed voices:

“…ed to the bed but not even allowed in it!”

“…sick.”

Jazz woke, slowly, his systems protesting coming out of recharge. He’d been having nice dreams about composing Decepticon poetry… and he gave a soft yowl of protest as one of the mechs came around the bed and crouched next to him. Jazz onlined his optic band.

The mech was an Enforcer. His doorwings were canted at a concerned angle and his optics were kind. “Does he even let you talk?”

“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Jazz muttered as he pushed himself to his knees and was confused by the Enforcer’s relief. “What’s going on?”

“We’re taking you somewhere safe. Can you walk? Let’s get you up.”

“Can stand fine,” Jazz said grumpily as he started pushing himself to his feet. The Enforcer offered a hand up and Jazz took it because he was still sleepy. His tail lashed in confusion though. What was going on? “Where’s Prowl?”

If Jazz were in danger, Prowl should be the one to retrieve him, take him to safety.

“Damnit, this thing is bolted down good,” someone hissed from above them.

“Don’t worry, sweetspark,” the Enforcer soothed as he took most of Jazz’s weight, “he won’t hurt you anymore.”

WHAT? “What’re talking about?” Jazz finally came fully awake, certain something was well and truly wrong now. He tried to call Prowl with his comsuite, got only static in answer. “What’s—” he saw the other Enforcer up on the bed, about to swing her baton at the holoprojector creating the chain. “No! Don’t do—” The baton came down on the headboard, splintering it and Jazz yowled in surprise, jumping away from the sudden noise with his tail puffed out.

The first Enforcer tried to soothe him, but Jazz wasn’t listening to him. “Stop that,” he yelled to the femme. He tried to run up to her and stop her from ruining Prowl’s headboard, but the second Enforcer caught him around the waist. Jazz gave him a set of scratches across his back and probably his doorwing for that, but he was only trying to wiggle free. “You don’t have to _break_ it,” he called. “It’s got a—”

SMASH! The headboard finished splintering and the holoprojector fell to the sheets with the rest of the debris. The chain was still on and the enforcer looked ready to finish smashing the projector to pieces to turn it off, so Jazz tugged on the connector to his collar to prime it for the safeword and said “Argon,” and the chain switched off.

Jazz renewed his struggles, scratching at the Enforcer trying to take him away from the apartment — _“Prowl!”_ he yowled, vocal tones halfway between his own voice and the cat’s yowls he’d been programmed to make.

The Enforcer grunted. “Leave that thing, and grab his hands before he starts pulling armor off.” Which made the femme turn away from the projector, leaving it intact, to Jazz’s relief.

Together the two Enforcers hauled the hissing, spitting, wiggling, clawing Polyhexian out of the apartment and to the large transport-mech who’d come with them. Huddled in a corner of the much larger mech’s hold, under a medical transport slab and swiping at the two Enforcers whenever they came close, Jazz found he had a distressed purr.

When the transport mech came to a stop, he had to take the first few steps of transforming to root mode to get Jazz out of cover and where the Enforcers could grab him. This time the lead Enforcer — who in an attempt to soothe Jazz had introduced himself as Quarrel — got him in stasis cuffs before picking him up. Jazz couldn’t do anything but yowl his protest. Jazz’s doors got moved in the process, but he barely noticed the shocks, he was so overwrought.

A third Enforcer met him at the door to what was probably an adorable little house on the outermost ring of Praxus, before the city gave way to a wilderness of metallic debris, deep canyons, acidic rivers, and sporadic clumps of crystals.

“Geez!” the mech said, ushering them inside. “I thought you were torturing a Predacon.”

“He’s—” Quarrel and the femme hefted Jazz again, who kicked out and almost made the Enforcers drop him, still yowling. “He’s definitely reprogrammed. He can talk, but he keeps yowling like this. And he keeps asking for the sicko who did this to him.”

“I don’t blame the mech for yowling,” the new Enforcer snapped. “I’d yowl too if you were carrying me like that. Here,” he opened a door somewhere in the house, “put him in here and take those damn cuffs off him.”

He was hauled in and dumped in a chair. The femme slunk out. Then the new mech held Jazz’s hands still while Quarrell took off the cuffs. “Now get out,” he commanded.

Quarrel puffed up, “You don’t give me orders, _officer.”_

“I’m sorry. Get out, _Sir._ You’re scaring him,” the officer said reasonably as he smoothed his thumbs over Jazz’s hands, petting gently. Jazz hissed in protest, ears back. “Whatever Prowl did, or didn’t do to him, he’s not going to calm down until you leave, at least.”

Quarrel stomped out. The new Enforcer, a slim mech who was smaller than Jazz, with motorcycle kibble, just kept petting Jazz’s hands with his thumbs, making the steady engine-idle purr Jazz didn’t anymore. Jazz didn’t _want_ to be calmed down, but he was reaching the limits of how much panic he could maintain, and this officer wasn’t being threatening. It wasn’t long before Jazz’s engine hiccupped as he started making his newly discovered, distressed purr.

Jazz had never been _distressed_ since Prowl had bought him, or even really before that. Ricochet had protected him until he’d sold himself. Then Prowl had always been firm, but usually gentle, and only caused the sort of pain that revved Jazz’s engine and made sparks crackle between his circuits. If something he did was distressing, Jazz had safewords, and when Prowl heard those safewords, he stopped and reassured his pet and only continued if Jazz was okay with it. This sort of fear/worry/distress was alien to Jazz’s experiences.

The felinoid reactions that had obviously been grafted to Jazz’s base programming probably weren’t helping, but Jazz didn’t know how to deal with what was happening. He couldn’t help it. Those cybercat reflexes were taking over as his own understanding failed.

“If you promise not to claw at me,” the Enforcer said gently when Jazz stopped fighting, “I will let go of your hands and let you move.”

Jazz hissed, ears going back, but, “Fine,” he bit out.

As soon as the Enforcer was out of the way, Jazz scrambled behind another, larger chair and wedged himself into the corner of the room. He let out a growl when the enforcer came over and sat on the floor nearby and within sight.

“I’m not going to take you out of there,” he soothed. “My name is Streetwise. This is an Enforcer safehouse for people in protective custody. We’re only keeping you here until First Aid arrives to give you a check up. What do you want me to call you?”

“Jazz. Where’s Prowl?”

“He’s in custody. We can’t let you see each other until after First Aid checks you over. Are you hungry?”

Even if Jazz’s systems hadn’t acclimated to having his energon on a twice per cycle schedule, and this was nowhere near third shift when Jazz got his second meal, Jazz would have refused. “Prowl feeds me,” he bit out, daring the Enforcer to find fault in that.

“That’s good,” Streewise didn’t rise to the bait. “What does he usually feed you? We want to have whatever you’re used to available in case you’re still here when you do get hungry.”

“It’s different every time,” Jazz told him. “He decides.”

“Oh,” Streetwise said curiously. “And how does he decide what to feed you?”

Right then Jazz realized he was being — gently — interrogated. They’d decided Prowl had done something to him, and this mech was using Jazz’s answers to build their case.

He let out a growl, ears going back and his tail went straight up and back and Jazz crouched. “Go away,” he hissed. “You don’t want me to see him. You’ve decided he’s guilty but I’m not going to answer questions if they’re just going to incriminate him!”

“Alright. I’ll leave you alone, Jazz. I’ll be right outside if you need me.”

 _“Won’t,”_ Jazz hissed. He was used to being on his own during the first, second and occasionally most of third shifts, and he didn’t want Streetwise; he wanted _Prowl._ He stretched his doorwings until he felt the shock, and muttered, “Argon,” to turn the shockers off. He folded his doors down flat against his back so he could better fit into the corner as Streetwise quietly left.

Purring to himself, Jazz batted at the two things dangling from the loop on his collar. One was the anchor point to the deactivated chain; the other was the crystal he’d bought last cycle. He was happy with his collar, wanted it to be _his_ and not just a thing Prowl made him wear. And Prowl had liked the little dangly! Jazz wrapped his hand around the spear of quartz and stroked it.

They left him alone for a joor. A couple breems into second shift, the door opened again. A growl/howl grew in his vocalizer and Jazz let it echo threateningly in the room.

“Jazz?” The voice was too deep to be Streetwise’s. Jazz recognized it: Barricade! The growl cut out. If anyone knew what had happened to Prowl it’d be his partner, right?

“Barricade!” Jazz scrambled out of his hiding place, tail lashing. “What’s happened? Where’s Prowl?!”

“Easy,” he soothed. “Let’s sit down.” Jazz let himself be guided back to the chair Streetwise had used, though he couldn’t settle properly and ended up crouching more than sitting. Barricade pulled another chair over to him, close enough to be crowding, and sat in it. “Prowl’s in a lot of trouble. They think he’s been reprogramming you.”

Jazz’s lines went cold. The cat programs and the restrictions didn’t count right? Those were just programs installed on his hard drive, grafted on, not altering his base personality. Easily uninstalled. Jazz could even turn them off with a safeword. Prowl’d bought the whole cat get up — programming and all — from a store, some kinky sex place, so they were legal! “He hasn’t! You believe me right? Prowl would never do something like that.”

“I know,” Barricade leaned forward. “It’s a serious allegation though, especially considering his… condition.”

“You’ve got to help!” Jazz was nearly frantic. Why couldn’t they just ask him? He’d tell them that whatever he was like at work — and he’d heard the gossip from Bluestreak, even if he didn’t quite believe it — Prowl was nothing but calm, in control, and gentle at home. Barricade had to know this. Surely he knew his partner better than the gossipers at work!

“I will,” the large Enforcer assured, moving closer again. It was starting to make Jazz’s plating crawl, but he ignored it. “We just need to check and make sure he hasn’t done anything untoward to you. So if you’ll just let me…” The panel on Barricade’s wrist unlocked.

For a single, sick moment Jazz thought it sounded perfectly reasonable. Of course they needed to check. If he’d been reprogrammed they couldn’t trust he’d _tell_ them the truth. He bowed his head and twisted in the chair to allow Barricade access to the latched ports on his back. He shuddered, feeling queasy when he felt Barricade unlatch the first one. Queued up the command in his processor to open it. Felt it start to open--

But when Barricade’s engine gave a lustful, self satisfied rev, Prowl’s old warning came flooding back:

_“His MO is to rescue young, impressionable, inexperienced mechs from the attentions of a more forward sexual aggressor, then leverage one-sided network connections with his victim in exchange for his help.”_

He tried to slam the cover closed, but Barricade’s claws kept it from closing fully. Barricade growled and started to pry the cover open again. “Open up, you little slut…”

With a screech of denial Jazz whirled in his chair, lashing out at the fully prehensile (like Prowl’s, some distant part of him observed) datacords spilling from Barricade’s wrist.

The larger mech screamed as Jazz’s claws severed two of them. Jazz didn’t hesitate — the cat reactions grafted to his own gibbering mind didn’t let him — and pounced on the others, aiming for the wrist itself where they were all clumped together, grabbing as much of the remaining bundle as he could in his teeth. Barricade screamed and backhanded him.

Jazz screeched again as he flew sideways until he hit the wall and yowled in pain. He hissed around the still-twitching datacords clenched between his teeth. He tried to scramble up, but even backhanding, Barricade’s claws had ripped away much of the armor in Jazz’s torso and hitting the wall had crumpled much of the rest. But he would not face Barricade on the floor!

Fuel pump pounding, drowning out other sounds, the blaster shot still made him flinch. Jazz barely saw Barricade fall to the ground.

Streetwise appeared over the fallen Enforcer, cuffing him quickly before moving to check on Jazz. Jazz growled weakly at him, Barricade’s datacords still in his teeth.

“Easy. I’m just going to try and stop your bleeding,” the officer said. “Not going to touch you otherwise. You can have the cords. I’m not going to take your prey. Good kitty, you should be proud of them.”

The last thing Jazz heard before he fell fully offline was his own purring, yet another frequency and rhythm he hadn’t been aware he’d been programmed to make. Groggily he classified it as the “it hurts” purr.

*

*

*

When the officers had come — and there were several SWAT members lurking “unobtrusively” (as though they _didn’t_ stand out like a Seeker at a minibots’ cohort gathering among the lab techs) nearby — to take him into custody, Prowl had six different tactical plans for evading and neutralizing the threats ready by the time they’d gotten to his desk. He implemented none of them. He had no reason to. He, in fact, had no reason to even care until they read off the charges: sexual assault, illegal reprogramming, and coercing consent to network via reprogramming. New tags made connections to older thoughts and dreams and emotional tags started proliferating through his current thoughts. Worry, mostly.

Still he stood calmly, let them cuff him. Jazz was precious. He had to be protected at all costs, and fighting would only put Jazz in danger. Or, just as important, ensure he’d never see his pet again. Hearing the charges only reinforced the conclusion that offering no resistance was the correct course of action: a medic would examine Jazz and determine that Prowl had had not altered his programming beyond what was legal and allowed by First Aid and the charges would be dropped. His only worry was for how this experience would affect Jazz.

They took him to a cell. He didn’t have a cellmate to threaten into submission, so Prowl sat with every appearance of calmness and fretted.

The guards were nervous with his presence. They watched him watching them and muttered to each other. Other than to continue to stare at them, even as his Stop-Staring-You’re-Being-Weird alarm blared almost constantly at him, Prowl ignored them.

First shift turned to second and Prowl got his first visitor.

“Are you alright?” Bluestreak asked.

Prowl had originally chosen Bluestreak as Jazz’s social contact and chaperone because he’d run their respective Connectix profiles through an altered version of a compatibility algorithm and decided they would enjoy each other’s company. Of course his background check had revealed Decepticon sympathies, but as long as he didn’t get his pet arrested while they were out, Prowl had judged that irrelevant. Even seeing the memory of Bluestreak taking Jazz to a Decepticon gathering hadn’t changed Prowl’s mind about that. In fact, it put Jazz in contact with people who would be supportive and sympathetic to his desire to change castes.

Now, with the emotional tags from Jazz’s dreams from last night influencing his thoughts, he only felt _fond_ of Jazz’s friend, and slightly irritated he was here checking on him, instead of being with Jazz.

“Unharmed,” Prowl bit out. “You should be with Jazz.”

Bluestreak shifted, as nervous as the guards, but seemingly braver than them. “They’ve got him in a safehouse. I don’t know which one, but First Aid will be headed there as soon as he’s free. I’m not supposed to be at work yet, but I called in a favor when I heard what happened and got myself assigned to medical escort. I wanted to be able to bring him news of how you were doing when I saw him.”

Prowl nodded. Bluestreak was not neglecting Jazz, and his reasoning for being here was logical. “Tell him I am fine and that I am cooperating with the investigation. Tell him—” he stopped, considering. “Tell him he is precious to me.”

The other mech smiled through the forcefield. “I wi—” he stopped, cocking his head to the side. Incoming call. _“Primus!_ I’ve got to go!”

Before Prowl could even calculate that there was no point in demanding an explanation, Bluestreak had transformed and sped out of the detention center, full lights and sirens.

Something had happened to Jazz, Prowl’s tac systems concluded. He clenched his fists in frustration, ignoring the pinpricks of pain as he dug his claws into his palm armor. Bluestreak was a night shift officer, he was not on duty, except for the favor he had used to be assigned to First Aid’s escort when he went to examine Jazz. The only reason he would have been called to respond to such an obvious emergency was if Jazz had been hurt, and First Aid was leaving immediately.

Black rage overtook Prowl’s spark and mind. His tac systems were consumed by scenario after scenario, not speculating on what had happened — he didn’t have nearly enough information for that — but planning out just what he would do to anyone who had harmed _his_ pet.

He was supposed to take his temper out on his desk. That was the _rule._ But he did not have access to his desk, nor were there any suitable alternatives in the cell. He tried to think of what a “measured response” to Jazz’s injury — whatever it was — would look like, and kept coming to the conclusion that nothing short of rending the offender limb from limb would be suitable.

That was not correct, he knew. There were laws against that. Murder was not allowed. Which left Prowl in a logical quandary, trying to think of a _measured response._

Halfway through third shift — a full shift and a half before they would need to file formal charges with the DA or release him for lack of evidence — one of the guards came down into the cellblock.

“The charges have been dropped,” he said, flinching as the forcefield dropped and he was exposed to the full electromagnetic onslaught of Prowl’s truly foul mood. “You’re free to go,” he finished bravely.

“Where is Jazz?” Prowl asked with every outward appearance of calm. Jazz was registered as his peripheral spouse. If they weren’t going to continue holding him on charges, they couldn't keep Jazz’s location from him.

“He’s at the main hospital. Stable!” the guard yelped as Prowl moved.

Prowl ignored him and simply brushed past him. Calmly he signed the paperwork for his release. Outside the detention block, he briefly debated where to go. The hospital, obviously. Checking on Jazz was much more important than executing any revenge plans. But his mood was… he had to admit it… dangerous. Even higher priority than seeing Jazz was ensuring that he was not a threat to his pet. And there was only one _sanctioned_ way for him to exorcise this black rage. So he went to the forensics labs.

Third shift, forensics was nearly empty. There were a few techs assigned to work the third and fourth shifts, and more that had stayed because they were absorbed in their current tasks, but still there was less than a third the usual number during the shifts Prowl worked. Several looked up at Prowl as he walked in, then scurried out of the way.

At his station, he contemplated his desk. He did not have any desire to spend the time cleaning up a mess afterwards, so he carefully removed everything that would scatter or break, piling it up on his chair.

It wasn’t enough. The black stormcloud turned red and he took the desk by the leg and heaved. Smashing it into the wall again. The leg bent from the force. Prowl hauled it away from the wall and picked up the desk by the flat top and threw it again.

He didn’t stop, the red didn’t fade, until the furniture was almost unrecognizable as once having had any purpose at all.

Prowl’s frame heaved, rage finally replaced by the strained, almost physical, relief that always preceded true calm. Carefully he moved the no-longer-a-desk back into its proper spot in the room and left it there. It would not have been logical to put his things back on top of it so he left them on his chair.

He passed the techs who had been in the room when he walked in, huddled by the door, on his way out, but he ignored them utterly. He needed to get to Jazz.

There were no insurmountable barriers at the hospital. Jazz was his peripheral spouse; Prowl was very quickly led to the room where he was recovering. Bluestreak looked up at him as he entered, and left them alone quickly.

Jazz looked fragile on the hospital bed and anger sparked again. Jazz was not _fragile;_ he was _strong._ But the anger died quickly.

Someone had removed Jazz’s ears and tail and all the patches of faux fur, but they were with the collar’s cube form next to the bed. Silently Prowl picked up the collar, transformed it, and gently affixed it around his pet’s neck. Jazz had gone through the trouble of personalizing it; he would not want to wake up without it. Gently he stroked his pet’s chest, and was rewarded with a faint purr. So they hadn’t removed the programming with the accessories.

And not even all the accessories. Jazz’s claws were still extended, and even in medically induced recharge he still clutched someone’s severed interfacing cords possessively. Even if he hadn’t known that the feline programming graft had been based on Predacon instincts, Prowl would have allowed Jazz to keep his prize. However, he was incensed by the circumstances that must have prompted _his_ Jazz to lash out at someone like that. There was only one way that could have come about, and Prowl needed to know who had tried to take what wasn’t theirs to touch.

Reading Jazz’s medical file offered some clues. A large mech, someone large enough to throw Jazz against a wall with relative ease, with claws spaced not much further apart than Prowl’s. Someone larger than either Prowl or Jazz, but not very much so. Careful not to disturb Jazz’s grip, Prowl examined the datacords. They were the same production line as Prowl’s. A tactical model’s. One, Prowl’s tac systems started spinning through possibilities, with both access to Jazz while he was in Enforcer custody and motive to hurt Jazz. Or motive to hurt Prowl, through Jazz.

Barricade. And if Jazz had his datacords, he’d been injured too. Which meant he was here, somewhere in the hospital. There was a higher than 98.6% chance that he was in the hospital’s secure ward. Prowl turned—

Only to blink as First Aid bustled in.

“Good. You’re here,” the medic said seriously.

“I am going to kill Barricade,” Prowl announced calmly.

“Yeah,” First Aid shifted. “After your display down in the forensics’ lab, we, ah, anticipated that reaction. He’s already been transferred.” Prowl had exactly four nanokliks to contemplate ways to make the medic tell him where, before First Aid continued. “And I don’t know where. Torturing me won’t do any good.”

Prowl contemplated that. His tac systems collated the data he had and came to a conclusion. “Very well.” Jazz was more important. But if he _ever_ saw Barricade again… “How is Jazz?”

The medic seemed astonished by the change of subject, but rallied quickly. “He’s fully repaired. He needs at least three cycles to finish integrating the repairs. After that he will still have weld-scars until he’s repainted.”

Jazz had been thinking of new colors, Prowl thought. Prowl still liked the black. The gold showed up beautifully against his plating. But if Jazz wanted a change, Prowl could find something for him. “Understood.”

“Hopefully I don’t have to tell you this,” First Aid huffed, “but that means no interfacing.”

That had occurred to Prowl. “Understood.”

First Aid sighed. He went over to Jazz and started checking him over. Prowl watched him without interfering. He recognized that if another were touching his pet like this, especially after what had apparently almost happened, he would likely react violently. But First Aid was exempt from that. Prowl did not know why, nor was he curious enough to analyse that fact right now.

“I had to remove a lot of sex toys and control devices to repair him,” First Aid finally said. Prowl tilted his head to one side. “The only reason you aren’t still in that cell for that fact alone was that they were all responsive to my medical codes and I saw they could be deactivated by safewords too.” Of course. Jazz’s safety was a priority. First Aid himself had corrected Prowl when he’d made the mistake of putting his kinks above Jazz’s wellbeing. “And Bluestreak says Jazz is happy with the way you play. It’s not my place to judge a mech’s kinks. If Jazz likes this,” he gestured to the open chastity lock on Jazz’s wrist, “there’s nothing I can do or say to make you stop. _But_ I want to schedule a follow up exam, sometime in the next few cycles, where I will be asking him _personally_ how he feels about each and every one of these.”

Prowl cocked his head to the side again. He had been paying attention to Jazz’s feelings and preferences, above and beyond simply halting when he heard a safeword, since the flavor debacle. Perhaps the seed crystals had been planted by Prowl’s early treatment of him, but Jazz liked being held and tied and controlled. He wanted to be locked down, reduced to being nothing but Prowl’s.

He’d even seen Jazz’s fantasy of Prowl bolting his chest plates open, exposing his spark for Prowl’s pleasure. Even if sparkmerging were something they did together, that passed the threshold of what could be made safe. Prowl wouldn’t do it.

So given what he knew, given that he had added the additional control devices in response to Jazz’s own fantasies, Prowl was not concerned by First Aid’s proposed interview.

First Aid only huffed at Prowl’s lack of reaction. “I don’t even know whether to take that as a good sign or a bad one.”

“That depends on the criteria you are using,” Prowl answered.

First Aid looked up, scrutinizing Prowl for a long moment, then looked back to Jazz. “We’ll be keeping him here and sedated until the beginning of first shift. You can take him home then. Nightmares and other stress reactions,” First Aid pinged Prowl a file; Prowl looked at it, noted it was an informational bookfile on PTSD, and saved it, “are _normal_ for mechs after a stressful experience.”

“Understood.”

First Aid huffed again. “That isn’t just for him. I’m authorizing medical leave for you. Use it to take care of Jazz, if you can’t justify it for yourself.” Prowl was having no issues with that, and when the protest First Aid obviously expected didn’t come, huffed in surprised exasperation. “You can sleep here tonight. I mean it though: no overloads for the next three cycles. Don’t put those toys back on him for at least that long.”

The medic hadn’t removed the latches on his back panels. When he and Jazz were alone again, Prowl closed them.

*

*

*

Jazz felt Prowl’s mind before he felt his owner’s prongs in his topmost port. So secure and familiar that he couldn’t even contemplate panic. He snuggled into the warm plating next to him and relaxed. Everything was fine, as it was supposed to be. Prowl had him.

“You awake?” Prowl asked.

_You know I am._

_You started awake three times during fourth shift. I am checking because, based on that, you are likely to fall back into recharge as soon as the dream fades._

_Was I dreaming?_ Jazz couldn’t remember. _I don’t remember. What was I dreaming?_

_You were. Twice you dreamed that Barricade’s attempt was successful. Once that I had been locked up permanently and left you alone. Just now, it was fuzzy. I could not see precise images._

Jazz shivered to hear about his nightmares and clung closer to Prowl. Then the implications of Prowl being able to tell him what he’d been dreaming hit him: Prowl himself hadn’t recharged. _Must have been dreaming about you. I feel fine now. Didn’t have to stay up all fourth shift._

 _Good. First Aid will—_ As though summoned, the medic’s entrance interrupted the thought.

He looked at the pair curled up on the medical berth and his optics went flinty with anger. “I told you no interfacing for three cycles.”

“You did,” Prowl acknowledged evenly. “Then you amended the instruction to no overloads.”

“And _what,”_ First Aid snapped, “are you doing now?”

“Helping me sleep,” Jazz defended. “We do this at home too.”

First Aid snorted. “Disconnect. I’ve got to give you your last check up and I don’t want him mucking in your systems while I do.”

 _I’m right here,_ Prowl thought as his plug removed itself from Jazz’s port. It curled through the air, winding back into his wrist. Jazz’s port cover snapped closed and Prowl gently closed the latch.

It wasn’t enough. He’d been fine while Prowl was plugged into him. Safe. But without the weight of Prowl’s mind against his, Jazz felt vulnerable. He shivered, and even Prowl’s hands on him couldn’t make it cease. His ports were vulnerable, and he knew no one was lurking behind him to rip them open, but… “Locks. Prowl, please.”

Prowl gathered Jazz into his arms and turned him so he was spooned against the larger mech. That helped. Prowl was behind him. No one was getting through Prowl. But he couldn’t stay here, like this, forever. Surely Prowl wouldn’t object to locking Jazz’s port covers closed?

Prowl wouldn’t. “First Aid says no toys until your repairs are fully integrated.”

Jazz shivered more, pressing himself against Prowl. He hugged himself, ended up hugging the severed datacords and flung them away with a cry of disgust. They bounced off the bed to the floor. Jazz looked at the quiet medic. “Please. I’m sure the locks can’t hurt anything.”

“The transformation locks…” First Aid started, but Prowl interrupted.

“He means the locks I put on his port covers for his cycles out,” he said, pulling one from his subspace. Jazz’s vents hitched seeing it. “They fit in the latches that are already installed.”

First Aid took the lock, examined it. “This one is a mechanical lock. It can’t be opened either by medical codes or a safeword.”

“No they cannot.” Prowl said evenly. “He is not allowed sexual activity with anyone but me, for any reason, as long as our contract is valid. And the only reason a medic would wish to access the ports on his back would be to reprogram him. As those are the only two uses for those ports, and neither are desired, I did not feel it necessary.”

“You make a good argument.” First Aid sounded reluctant still.

“Please,” Jazz said quietly.

The medic relented. “Fine. You can put them on. Then I’ll do the check up. But those are _it.”_

Jazz was too busy rolling over so Prowl could lock him up tight to care about First Aid’s scolding. He immediately felt safer when the last one snapped closed. He went limp with relief.

Prowl pet Jazz’s audial horn with his thumb. “I need to get up and let First Aid work. I’ll remain right here.”

“Kay.”

Jazz didn’t want First Aid touching him, but he endured it. He was fairly sure that he had liked touching people before. Hugs, shaking hands, casual brushes of plating… This was ridiculous. Barricade hadn’t even managed to do anything. There was no reason for a simple medical check to feel so _invasive._

“It’s a common reaction to trauma,” First Aid assured comfortingly. “It will pass.” Jazz didn’t want it to pass; he wanted First Aid to stop touching him. “You’re fine. Repairs still tender. No overloads. No racing. No strenuous activities. As soon as you finish your breakfast, you can go.” He nudged the cube of medical grade Jazz had missed seeing before towards his patient.

Jazz looked towards Prowl.

“Whatever you want.”

Jazz wanted Prowl to stop coddling him and be his normal, forceful, possessive self. Nice Prowl wasn’t the Prowl who made him feel safe! He couldn’t say that in front of the medic though. First Aid was probably why Prowl was being so… hesitant anyway. He’d go back to normal once they were home, right? “Feed me?”

First Aid scoffed and left the room.

Prowl picked up the cube and contemplated it, then Jazz. “Kneel on the edge of the berth, hands in your lap.” Happily Jazz did so, looking slightly up at Prowl who was standing. “Hold your doorwings correctly,” Prowl snapped, and chagrined Jazz corrected his posture.

The Praxan took a moment longer to make sure Jazz was seated properly, then gripped Jazz’s chin while he poured a sip of energon in his mouth. Jazz mewed in relief. This was good, this was normal. Jazz could just switch his visor off and pretend none of the last horrible cycle had happened.

Then Barricade loomed out of the darkness, the pleasant smile he’d always worn dripping venom and Jazz jerked away.

He spilled the energon over himself and the bed. He spilled. He’d never spilled before. What happened when he spilled? He didn’t know. Bad pet!

Prowl just looked at him coldly. When Jazz started to cringe away, he snapped, “Don’t move,” and Jazz froze. “Now. Clean this up and we’ll continue.”

Gratefully Jazz flung himself into the task, using the cleaning cloth from the side table.

“Good,” Prowl interrupted Jazz’s attempt to scrub a nonexistent stain away. “Back in position.”

When Jazz was, Prowl climbed onto the bed behind him, straddling Jazz’s feet. Jazz felt like he was going to be tipped forward and onto the floor until Prowl wrapped his clawed hand around his neck, holding his pet’s jaw between his thumb and forefinger, claws digging gently into his neck.

It wasn’t Prowl’s teeth, but it did the trick. This time energon flowed smoothly in gentle sips into Jazz’s mouth and into his tank.

Jazz sagged against Prowl as the cube was set aside. “S’good.”

Prowl stroked Jazz’s chest possessively. “Indeed. Home, I think will be better.”

“Yeah.”

*

*

*

Bluestreak showed up while Prowl was still cleaning up the mess the femme Enforcer had made of the berthroom.

“Skybyte admits he started everything, telling the Enforcers he suspected you’d been reprogrammed.” Bluestreak said standing next to the table. Jazz was not allowed to give up the stool for their visitor. Prowl brushed past them, making another trip down to the trashroom. “After his complaint turned out to be false, they questioned how he’d gotten this suspicion and he said a ‘concerned acquaintance’ had come to him and said that he couldn’t make an accusation because of a conflict with Prowl. When pressed further he described Barricade almost exactly. So that rust-for-wires is getting conspiracy to commit, and others, on top of all his other charges.”

“I just don’t ever want to see him again.” It certainly didn’t make Jazz feel any better that Barricade’s attempt hadn’t been opportunistic, but planned. “I’ll testify, but otherwise if I see him again I’ll rip his face off.”

Bluestreak smiled. “Skybyte’s willing to help with that. He’s ready to chomp the fragger himself, but when he heard your claws were functional enough to,” he looked at the table where the severed datacords waited, almost accusingly. Jazz didn’t want to look at them, but he didn’t seem to be able to leave them anywhere either. “That,” Bluestreak finished. “He offered to put you in touch with a felinoid Predacon he knows who can teach you how to use them properly.”

Jazz flexed his claws several times. “I’ll ask Prowl.”

Bluestreak eyed Prowl as the mech swept back through the door and back into the bedroom. A klik later they heard the sounds of him taking a power drill to the wall. Remounting the chain’s holoprojector. Jazz was relieved. He wanted things to be normal, safe, again.

Prowl came back when the noise stopped. “Bluestreak, you may stay with us and talk to Jazz, but we are moving to the bed.”

“Ah,” Bluestreak looked at Jazz.

“Just the one chain and no overloading,” Jazz promised. “Medical orders. You can stay.”

“Bring the stool,” Prowl said as he tugged on the loop on the collar and led Jazz to the bed. Bluestreak stayed until he had to leave for work at the third shift.

Ricochet arrived on the train the next cycle. Prowl opened the door and Ricochet barged past him looking for his twin. Jazz endured much fussing over his injuries and screeching about the deactivated transformation locks and the port locks.

Jazz screamed right back and felt like he might be okay.

*

*

*

Ricochet took him to get painted before returning to Polyhex, even spotted him the shanix since technically Jazz didn’t have any money except what was in his accounts, his meager savings. All Prowl had said was that it had to be black. It’d been hard, at first, to let the detailer touch him, but it got easier, and Jazz was relaxing by the time the enamel top coat was curing under UV lights. If he had to be black, he’d decided he would be happy with being black like this: a velvety black with a smokey silvered top coat. Not boring!

He still had nightmares, not all of which Prowl managed to soothe away before he woke. The hardest night though had been when he’d woken from his own nightmare and heard _Prowl_ calling out softly: _no, no, no._ Neither of them got any more sleep that night.

He still had Barricade’s interfacing cords. Talking to Skybyte about Predacon base programming revealed why he couldn’t seem to get rid of them. He’d ripped them from his enemy with his claws and teeth. Fairly won. Taking trophies was apparently hard wired into Predacons. Cats, especially, were possessive of their prey. Jazz compromised by coiling them up in a box and stashing it with the rest of his things under Prowl’s bed, where he didn’t have to look at them. Then Skybyte introduced him to Cheetor and Prowl agreed to allow lessons on using his claws as weapons once a kilocycle.

Jazz came home from First Aid’s check up/interrogation with his transformation and wrist locks reactivated and his ears, tail and fur all reinstalled. His cat-parts went in much easier the second time, connecting smoothly to the network of feelers they’d built before. First Aid said that if he ever took the relay out of his processor, the feeler network would be taken apart by his self repair within two kilocycles. Definitely a thing that was harder to install than take apart. Jazz didn’t care; he was glad to have them back.

He still had the locks on his back, but he felt safe enough to walk from the clinic back home, with Bluestreak. He was somewhat surprised not to see Prowl stalking him the whole way.

He was pretty sure he had Prowl figured out. He definitely wasn’t emotionless, and he seemed to be getting better at emotional expression, but mostly he only expressed things three ways: things like desire, affection, worry, protectiveness were all channeled into possessive displays. He just didn’t have any other way to show he cared. Admiration, appreciation, and desire again, all channeled into his aesthetic control, and into sex. Sadness, frustration, fear… all of that became anger, and he took it out on his desk at work, though that sounded like it would be changing. Bluestreak said rumor at the station was that First Aid had bullied Captain Brass into adding a “tantrum room”, located only a short distance from forensics. Officially it wasn’t just for Prowl’s use. Unofficially, no one wanted to see, or — more specifically — be stuck in the room with him while he destroyed another desk.

Jazz half-expected to get back to the apartment to find Prowl _had_ stalked him to the clinic and back, but no. Prowl was busy… putting together a new bed?

Jazz couldn’t find it in himself to complain.

Their new berth was a four poster model, with a simple, extremely sturdy frame. It would look like the outline of a cube, if Prowl hadn’t draped a gauzy, filmy steelsilk in elegant arcs around the top frame. Jazz’s tail swished happily. Prowl’s steel bondage cords were out and sitting in innocuous coils on the bed while Prowl fussed with the drape.

Jazz let out a deep, demanding _frag me_ purr.

Prowl looked up. “Come here Jazz. Kneel on the bed. Here. Face the foot.”

Purring louder, Jazz did so, putting his hands in his lap and looking up. Prowl examined him from various angles, then started taking the locks off his port panels. Which was fine until Prowl reached for the second one. The top one they had unlocked, but only when Prowl was plugged in (which, as before, was as much as he could when they were both home). The others, though, _stayed_ locked. Jazz shivered.

“Argon,” Jazz said quietly. “Please, I’m not ready.”

Prowl stopped, petted down Jazz’s back. “Then we will stop for the cycle. You _will_ still wear them when going out, or when I’m gone, but I want you to be able to go without locks while in the apartment with me.”

Jazz looked at the sturdy four poster bed, the coils of rope. “I think that’s extortion,” he said playfully. Prowl reached around him briefly to bat gently at the crystal dangling from Jazz’s collar; he hadn’t bothered switching to the lighter one to go see First Aid. The _plink, plink_ sounds it made as it hit Prowl’s fingers were almost musical.

“Call it what you will. That is my criteria for doing this with you. I will not use you as my canvas until you feel safe with me again.”

“I do feel safe with you,” Jazz insisted. “You’re the only thing I always felt safe with.”

“Then prove it,” Prowl said mercilessly. “Safeword?”

Trepidation clawed at Jazz’s spark. He didn’t _want_ the vulnerability of being unlocked, but he trusted Prowl. Moreover, he _wanted_ to be helpless to Prowl. To do these rope ties, he had to let himself be helpless. Prowl had a point. Could he do this if refused to make himself vulnerable to the one person he trusted entirely?

“Neon,” Jazz gave the safeword. He was uncomfortable, but wanted to continue.

“Good pet.” Prowl slid fully behind Jazz, holding him gently by the throat. One of his cables went in as the rest of the locks came off. _Good/Beautiful,_ Prowl continued, thought to thought. _I’ve been working on this one. Planning, ever since I saw you fantasizing about bolting your chest open. I will show you what I see when I look at you. I_ **_want_ ** _to show you what you are._

 _Pet/toy/yours,_ Jazz’s thoughts tumbled back.

_Yes. All of that. And more._

Prowl ran his hands up and down Jazz’s plating, then he started with the ropes, and hard shelled solid energon treats with myomer filling to feed him. This was more complicated than anything Prowl had done before with the ropes, and he went slowly. Jazz’s engine revved, and he purred. Inevitably, sparks crackled over his plating as Prowl arranged each knot precisely. He shut off his optic band, but Prowl switched it right back on.

_Look at me. Watch me. You will see ME, not him. Never again._

Jazz groaned, panting just from the press of Prowl’s possessive thoughts against his own.

All of this before Prowl had even restrained him in any way. He was just wrapping and tying ropes around Jazz’s hands, his legs… Especially his legs, taking great pains to ensure his legs would be secure, wrapping and knotting the ropes around them and weaving them in and out of the transformation locks. Then Prowl looped a rope around the corner of the four poster, wove it through the bindings on Jazz’s left leg and pulled taut. He repeated with his right, pulling until Jazz’s legs spread slightly. Prowl ran his hands up Jazz’s torso possessively.

_Can you move?_

Jazz tried, pulling on one leg, then the other. His feet could move, but not his knees or thighs. _No._

 _Good. Beautiful/Mine,_ Prowl thought as secured Jazz’s feet in place.

Jazz’s hips and torso were still free, but he kept still as Prowl moved around behind him. This was different than anything else Prowl had done before. Jazz was aroused, but cognizant of what Prowl was doing. He couldn’t see everything Prowl was doing, but already he could tell it was more elaborate than simply an arrangement of knots.

Something touched his feet, and despite burning curiosity, he didn’t try and turn to look at it. Fear tried to spark — there was something going on _behind him,_ where his _ports were_ — but Prowl’s plug in his topmost port, his owner’s mind against his, settled him almost immediately. Instead his fans clicked on, spilling heat into the air as his tail lashed.

Jazz’s systems couldn’t decide whether to make the happy/contented purr or the demanding _frag me_ one. His engine cycled between them every few ventilations as Prowl worked.

It was only a matter of time before Prowl decided to secure Jazz’s misbehaving tail, and the mech decided to do it sooner rather than later. Jazz nearly overloaded, systems set positively afire when Prowl grabbed it gently. Jazz tried to hold it still for him, but it insisted on twitching uncontrollably. This didn’t seem to bother Prowl; his engined hummed in arousal/satisfaction as he secured it to what Jazz could feel was a metal stand of some sort, then to his tied leg and finally to the rope secured to the bedpost. The tail tried to wiggle but only succeeded in pushing futilely against the ropes and making Jazz groan. He barely noticed Prowl securing his feet to the thing behind him as well.

Tied kneeling, Jazz had expected Prowl to loop the ropes trailing from his hands up to the canopy; instead Prowl gently pushed him back and Jazz felt that the thing Prowl had set up behind him (and secured his tail to) was an arc-shaped support made from two long bars, spaced just far enough apart so that they didn’t impede access to his ports, which Prowl triggered the command to open without asking Jazz first — wonderfully, blessedly, _normal_ for Prowl — and Jazz cried out in pleasure in response.

Arced backwards beneath him, Prowl pressed Jazz down until every part of his frame was flush with the metal arc, locking Jazz’s motor controls as he did so. Jazz couldn’t even tremble as his frame strained to hold the position Prowl had put him in. Sparks flowed over Jazz’s frame and Prowl’s engine hummed in satisfaction.

Prowl secured Jazz’s hips and chest to the arc support before moving onto his hands. These were quick ties, serving the function of keeping Jazz in place without any decorative quality. Jazz had to wonder why Prowl, in full control of Jazz’s motor controls, bothered, but he didn’t ask; he just revelled in the feeling of being so completely at his lover’s mercy. So much revelling that he missed Prowl opening his wrist cover and screamed in unexpected overload when Prowl roughly pulled the mostly-unused datacords from their place.

He couldn’t even go limp with exhaustion.

 _Good pet,_ Prowl purred across their connection.

 _Pet/toy/yours,_ Jazz sent back, barely able to form the thoughts.

Not that exhaustion would have lasted long as Prowl braided the cords together to create two ropes he used to start tying Jazz’s arms together, above (or what would have been above, if Jazz had still been sitting upright) his head, palms facing outward. Jazz couldn’t writhe. He would have, but he couldn’t; Prowl wasn’t letting him. Prowl started at Jazz’s shoulders and worked his way down to his wrists, then knotted the datacords and let the remainder hang free. Jazz felt the plugs twitching senselessly against the sheets, trying to find a port that would never be offered to them. Then Prowl took the ropes still dangling from his hands and pulled Jazz’s frame taut against the support. Jazz cried out at the borderline painful stretch and overloaded again.

_Beautiful._

Jazz couldn’t respond that time.

By the time the lightning storm faded to the labored spinning of fans, Prowl had secured the ropes to the support frame and the bedframe, extending Jazz’s claws in a completely futile display of threat. Prowl’s engine was humming with more arousal than satisfaction now, but his determination to finish, to make this _perfect_ seeped through his firewalls.

One of Prowl’s datacords slithered over Jazz’s chest and around his torso, plugging into his second port before the first withdrew. Prowl’s mental presence flickered briefly as the data connection transferred from one channel to the other. Jazz wondered why, but then Prowl moved around him, the transfer keeping them networked without tangling Prowl’s cord around Jazz’s frame. Jazz jerked as Prowl’s control of his motor system was briefly interrupted, and he realized why Prowl had quickly tied down his frame earlier.

Moving back and forth, transferring cords each time, Prowl secured Jazz’s shoulders to the support and to the bed frame, then removed the quick tie across his chest. Then he repeated the process with Jazz’s hips, then lower torso.

 _Keep your doorwings at the correct angle,_ Prowl ordered as he admired his work, running his hands over Jazz’s plating, from his claws to his fully immobilized tail. He didn’t need to rein in Jazz’s motor controls now; his pet couldn’t have twitched more than his still unsecured doorwings if he’d struggled with all his strength.

 _Why?_ Jazz gasped back. He wasn’t struggling, but his frame kept tensing, trying to move into a stable position, one _not_ bent over backwards in Prowl’s idea of an aesthetically perfect arc. He tensed and then relaxed, and each repetition the relaxation lasted longer. Prowl ran his claws over his chest and his thoughts started turning fuzzy with enjoyment and trust. _You gonna tie them too?_

 _No,_ Prowl responded, the thought almost cruel. _You are going to hold them._

He didn’t add an _or else._ There wasn’t an _or else_ with Prowl. Jazz would hold them there, because he’d been told to. Period.

Jazz’s engine whined. It was hard to focus on anything but arousal and helplessness and Prowl. And even those thoughts were fuzzy, indistinct. Trust and calm took over his mind and he finally went utterly limp in his bindings. His fans whirred and he was on the very edge of another overload, but he couldn’t even twitch in response to Prowl’s hands on his plating. Trust and submission held him as securely as any of the ropes.

 _Beautiful,_ Prowl whispered. _Already beautiful/strong/MINE. I’m tempted to leave you like that pet. But I want more. I want ALL of you. What do you say to that? Safeword?_

 _Helium,_ the safeword programming graft forced him to send coherently before Jazz’s thoughts slid back to incoherent, _Trust/submit, pet/toy/yoursyoursyoursyours…_

 _Perfect._ And Prowl triggered Jazz’s chestplates to open, exposing his sparkchamber. Jazz cried out. He was beyond any sense of fear or hesitancy. There was nothing left in him to resist Prowl claiming even this. _I know you can’t merge, pet,_ his owner assured anyway, _but I will have this regardless._

_Yesyesyesyes!_

Prowl groaned as sparks flew from his plating. They jumped from his frame to Jazz’s and back, bathing them both in purple/blue plasma light.

Resolve flooded Jazz from over Prowl’s firewalls; his lover forced himself to move.

He threaded his ropes through the chest armor, knotting them, and _pulled._ Jazz screamed in _pleasure/pain_ as he was forced further open. Not just exposed and helpless, but taken, controlled. He couldn’t have closed his chest now if he wanted to. And he overloaded again as Prowl tied the other side.

_MINE!_

Jazz didn’t have the coherency of thought to agree.

He felt Prowl settle between his knees, datacords slithering over his plating, weaving and knotting with the ropes binding Jazz until Prowl was bound as well. Three of them plugged into Jazz’s ports, but the other two wrapped around his chest and into him. Jazz gasped — yes, yes, yes — as they slid and wriggled deeper, towards his spark chamber.

 _You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,_ Prowl whispered reverently. _Let me show you what I see._

Then Prowl’s sight imposed itself over Jazz’s view of the ceiling and new bed canopy.

Jazz was laid out before himself, perfection of form brought to the height of beauty by the silver steel ropes. Jazz’s strength was expressed in the perfection of the arc he was immobilized in, in his exposed claws, in the relaxed strain of his frame, in the trusting angle of his ears; his vulnerability in the security of the ropes, the helplessness in his sheer immobilization, and the exposure of his spark chamber — exposed willingly but forced to remain bared to whatever pleasures or torments Prowl decided to enact. A spark opened up like a sacrifice to a higher power. But Prowl didn’t stand over him like a god; he kneeled like a penitent. His cords plugged into Jazz, taking what was his, and circled the closed chamber, waiting for the last to be granted.

Dizzy with submission and trust and _near overload_ crawling through his circuits, Jazz willingly granted him that last piece of himself. His chamber spiraled open and away, flooding the room in blue sparklight.

Gently Prowl’s prongs slid into Jazz’s soul.

*

*

*

*

End.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone who’s read them will see a lot of repeated elements from both _Breaking Dreams_ and _Twelve Days of Winterkink_. 
> 
> _Breaking Dreams_ was a tragedy. A beautifully written one (I hope), with some tarnished but still gleaming silver linings, but a tragedy nonetheless. And because I really don’t like tragedies, my mind has been playing with the ideas and permutations of it, like probing a mouth sore with my tongue (with much the same results). I am determined that I will not write a sequel to it, because I wouldn’t be able to do it without crying every time I looked at it and I can’t afford that, emotionally. As such, this is an attempt to scratch that itch without being sent to a head shrink. Again. Anti depression/anxiety meds are no fun.
> 
> As for the stuff taken from Winterkink: I really do prefer writing (and reading) plug and play, and I (and my primary cheerleader) really liked the mechanics I’d come up with for it in that story. So really, I thought, why not? 
> 
> Also, credit where due, there’s a few repeated elements from Rizobact’s wonderful _Winner Take All_ (http://archiveofourown.org/series/353039), mostly because she has been with me every step of this writing process and it ended up being as much for her as it was for the anon OP who first posted the request on the kinkmeme. Kudos again, Riz, on your wonderful story and thank you so very much for your support and help


End file.
